Oslo to boards: Let women in

So why do women hold just 7 percent of the board seats at the country’s major listed companies?

So why do women hold just 7 percent of the board seats at the country’s major listed companies?

The government of Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik wondered the same thing and decided to do something about it: Oslo has proposed a controversial quota system that will require listed companies to fill at least 40 percent of their board seats with women. That has been a de facto standard for female representation in government since 1981, when the country’s first female prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, named eight women to her 20-person cabinet.

The quota kicks in next year for the many major companies in which the state owns a stake. Others will have until 2005 to meet the goal.

Norwegian companies are not pleased and contend that the quota violates shareholders, rights. Svein Aaser, who runs Den norske Bank, which is 47 percent state-owned, warns that the plan could alienate international investors and depress Norwegian shares. “It gives the impression that the government wants to interfere,” says Jarl Veggan, a spokesman for Oslo-based DnB.

Counters Laila Daavoey, the minister for Children and Family Affairs who is leading the equality campaign: The government has to act, because corporate managers “will not do this without pressure. It is a question of power.” She’s dismissive of businessmen,s complaints that there aren,t enough qualified women to fill the seats. Half the students at the Norwegian School of Management, the country’s leading business school, are female, Daavoey notes, so the low board representation makes little sense. The reluctance to add female board members reflects a “boys, club,, mentality, she says.

Despite their opposition to quotas, leading business groups acknowledge that there is a gender gap in Norwegian boardrooms. “We need to speed up in this area,,, says Sigrun Vågeng, head of labor policy at the Confederation of Norwegian Business and Industry, “but we would like to do this voluntarily, not by law.,,

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