WOMEN'S RIGHTS : NORWAY, PIONEER IN QUOTAS FOR WOMEN ON BOARDS.

Since 2008, Norwegian companies have had no choice in the matter: they can be shut down if their boards do not have at least 40% women members. Those concerned - around 300 public limited companies (ASA in Norwegian, with minimum capital of one million krone, or 120,000) - have complied and none has been sanctioned.

The business world in this non-EU country hardly appreciated the initiative that originated in 2001 in the minds of two ministers, from a centre-right government, moreover. At the time, women's presence on corporate boards was less than 10%. "Habits were slow to change, although Norwegian women had been working for a long time and more women were completing higher education than men," recalls Laila Davoy, Christian Democrat minister for families at the time.

She and Industry Minister Ansgar Gabrielsen (Conservative) decided to forge ahead despite the outcry. Parliament followed. In November 2003, it adopted a law setting a 40% quota. Public groups had one year to come into line.

The private sector was given two years, later prolonged until 1 January 2008, but it dragged its feet. "A major industrial figure would have had to stand up as a symbol of rejection of the measure for a real resistance to have been organised. But no one wanted to take on that role," observes Marit Hoel, director of the Centre for Corporate Diversity. Around 80 companies not willing to go along nevertheless swapped their ASA statute for another (AS), reserved in principle to smaller companies not affected by the law.

Six years after entering into force, the law - unique in the world at the time - "had an impact that went beyond the companies initially concerned," continues Hoel. The share of women on boards of AS-type companies rose from 27% in 2009 to 30% last year, according to the Centre for Corporate Diversity.

Women still have a smaller presence on boards, all the same. Their share rose by only two points, to 19%, from 2009 to 2013. At the end of last year, only 7% of the 126 leading Norwegian companies had a woman CEO. Women are also still lagging behind in terms of salary. Among the 300 leading executives in 20 of the largest corporations listed on the Oslo exchange, the 42 women concerned earned only 9% of the total, according to a survey conducted by the daily Aftenposten.

For Hoel, this is due to the nature of the positions...

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