SHOULD
WOMEN BE
FAST-TRACKED
TO TOP JOBS?
In Norway, a gender
equality law
catapulted women
to board positions,
forcing hundreds of
men to lose their jobs.
Stylist asks, should
the UK follow suit?
omen have split the
atom, won Nobel
prizes and reigned
W over countries.
So why are we still
embarrassingly underrepresented
in senior positions at work?
While there’s no denying that here
in the UK we’re beginning to make
baby steps towards gender equality
at work, in typical British fashion
we’re doing it politely, reservedly
and being altogether a bit slow.
Thanks to Harriet Harman, a
new parliamentary initiative,
Women For Boards, is tackling the
startling 62% of FTSE 250 firms
that don’t have a single woman on
their board. But before you get too
excited, Mary Meaney, a partner at
McKinsey & Co, the consulting
firm behind the new initiative, has
admitted: “It’s going to take 50
years to achieve some form of gender
parity.” Yes, that’s 50 years before
we can walk into a boardroom and
expect to see as many women as men.
Our European neighbours on the
other hand, are taking a rather more
ballsy approach. They’re ready to
force change, taking their cue from
Norway, who took a revolutionary
stand nearly eight years ago.
NORWAY�TAKES
THE�LEAD
One frosty morning in February,
2002, the entire population of
Norway picked up its daily paper
and let out a collective yelp of shock.
Ansgar Gabrielsen, then minister
of Trade and Industry, was publicly
declaring war on gender inequality,
and no one was spared. In a
no-holds-barred interview, he
named and shamed every one of the
country’s leading companies where
men exclusively held top jobs and
revealed that out of 611 companies
on the stock exchange, 470 didn’t
have one female board member.
Gabrielsen was on a one-man
mission to disintegrate the Old Boys’
Club. He made sure everyone was
listening, and then revealed his
proposal. By 2005, women must hold
40% of the boardroom positions or
the company would have to delist.
Gabrielsen called it a “shock
bombing”. He wanted to force gender
equality and he wanted it to happen
now. Unsurprisingly his public
crusade had a ripple effect across
the country. If he were successful,
the ramifications would be huge. Not
only would boards have to find more
than 600 qualified women to fill the
quota, hundreds of men would have
to be made redundant.
Public reaction was strong.
There were fears that if the law was
implemented it would encourage
positive discrimination and make
women feel like they were ‘token’
appointments, rather than earning
their place on the board through
talent and hard work. Bente
Løwendahl, the first female
professor at the Norwegian School
of Management, called the quota “a
bunch of nonsense. I’m glad I was
chosen for my merits and not
because I’m a woman”, she said.
But among the doubters, there
were a whole lot more who backed
Gabrielsen. Arni Hole, director
general of the Department of
Family Affairs and Gender Equality,
says that she and her fellow
parliamentarians immediately
thought the plan was a no-brainer:
“We felt that any argument against
the law was stupid,” she says. “Since
excellence is distributed evenly
throughout people, you have to look
for board members of both genders.
It is not smart to lose out on talent.”
A�RADICAL�IDEA��
Predictably, however, many weren’t
ready for such a radical change. Most
of the objections came from business
leaders and employers who warned
of dire consequences: they said
company competence and shareholder
confidence would plummet and
financial chaos would ensue. The
idea of women in Jimmy Choos
kicking the chairs from under the
men in pinstripes could only, they
said, lead to economic meltdown.
As one male director who has
survived the recent cull of boards
put it: “What I and a lot of people
don’t understand is why it is seen as
good for business to swap seasoned
players for lip gloss?”
But fast-forward just 16 months
and Gabrielsen had made it happen.
He’d taken one for the girls and
created a new law. The Norwegian
government gave the business
community a deadline: you have
until July 2005 to make 40% of
your boardroom women.
The effect was immediate.
Across the country, teams of
WWW�STYLIST�CO�UK����
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