2008 Woodie Awards
Norway's glass ceiling cracked by new female business elite
Simon Kelly
Issue date: 2/1/08 Section: World
Jan.1 marked a new chapter in Norway's march toward gender equality, as the country's government will now be effectively reinforcing a law that requires all publicly listed companies to ensure that at least 40 percent of administrative positions are held by women.
Passed in 2003, the law was designed to give corporations ample time to hire the nearly 1,000 women required to meet the quota. According to Norway's Centre for Corporate Diversity, only seven percent of board members were female before this legislation was passed.
However, while all public companies complied with the law, many did so with reservations, while others decided to go private in order to avoid being closed for not meeting the quota.
"I am against quotas for women or men as a matter of principle. Board members of public companies should be chosen solely on the basis of merit and experience," said Sverre Munck, head of international operations at the media firm Schibsted, to The Economist.
Munck's attitude can be seen reflected in much of Norway's main business lobby and stock exchange, institutions that have been long dominated by, as the NHO's (Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise) Sigrun Vageng put it to BBC News, "the old boy's network."
But despite recurrent anxieties that many women's relative inexperience in the boardroom will be the undoing of companies across Norway, recent events signify quite the opposite about what members of Norwegian business circles are calling the "golden skirts": women holding high powered positions on multiple boards.
For instance, Ms. Reksten Skaugen of Statoil (Norway's biggest oil firm) was voted chairwoman of the year in 2007 for her dismantling of an Iranian oil scandal her company had been involved with in 2003 under the directorship of the current chairman and chief executive. The board meeting she organized in response resulted in the resignation of both men, and her speedy promotion.
"This reform is a success. The most alarmist people told us the economy would suffer, that investors would flee Oslo, that the level of competence on the boards would plunge," said Marit Hoel, the head of Norway's Centre for Corporate Diversity (CCD) to the AFP (French Press Agency). "What we've seen is that the economy is doing very well, that the investors are still there, and that the women who have been appointed to the boards are more highly educated, more international and younger than their male counterparts, which creates a new dynamic."
Passed in 2003, the law was designed to give corporations ample time to hire the nearly 1,000 women required to meet the quota. According to Norway's Centre for Corporate Diversity, only seven percent of board members were female before this legislation was passed.
However, while all public companies complied with the law, many did so with reservations, while others decided to go private in order to avoid being closed for not meeting the quota.
"I am against quotas for women or men as a matter of principle. Board members of public companies should be chosen solely on the basis of merit and experience," said Sverre Munck, head of international operations at the media firm Schibsted, to The Economist.
Munck's attitude can be seen reflected in much of Norway's main business lobby and stock exchange, institutions that have been long dominated by, as the NHO's (Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise) Sigrun Vageng put it to BBC News, "the old boy's network."
But despite recurrent anxieties that many women's relative inexperience in the boardroom will be the undoing of companies across Norway, recent events signify quite the opposite about what members of Norwegian business circles are calling the "golden skirts": women holding high powered positions on multiple boards.
For instance, Ms. Reksten Skaugen of Statoil (Norway's biggest oil firm) was voted chairwoman of the year in 2007 for her dismantling of an Iranian oil scandal her company had been involved with in 2003 under the directorship of the current chairman and chief executive. The board meeting she organized in response resulted in the resignation of both men, and her speedy promotion.
"This reform is a success. The most alarmist people told us the economy would suffer, that investors would flee Oslo, that the level of competence on the boards would plunge," said Marit Hoel, the head of Norway's Centre for Corporate Diversity (CCD) to the AFP (French Press Agency). "What we've seen is that the economy is doing very well, that the investors are still there, and that the women who have been appointed to the boards are more highly educated, more international and younger than their male counterparts, which creates a new dynamic."
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