Audio Recording: Engendering Change Podcast
Podcast
Dec. 18, 2015
Please join us as we welcome the CORE Club and the Royal Norwegian Consulate General for a discussion on corporate board quotas. What do gender roles mean for business? What effect does the increasing visibility of women on boards have on women in the earlier stages of their careers? Do women leaders lead differently?
When, in 2002, Norwegian trade minister Ansgar Gabrielsen unveiled a radical new plan to put more women into his country's boardrooms, many Oslo business leaders were appalled, and Gabrielsen's own conservative party publicly disowned him. Gabrielsen's announcement – that the boards of major Norwegian companies would be compelled to include at least forty percent women – generated mocking headlines across Europe.
Today, just a decade after Norway began enforcing its corporate gender quotas, the jibes about "golden skirts" and "babes on boards" are long forgotten. Corporate board quotas have been imposed in Belgium, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain, and though early data is mixed, it suggests that the shift has meant a net gain from an earnings – as well as a social justice – perspective.