WHEN Norway introduced a 40% quota for female directors of listed companies in 2006, to come into force in 2008, it was a first. Non-complying firms could theoretically be forcibly dissolved, though none has in fact suffered such a fate. Since then gender quotas for boards have been imposed in Belgium, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain (though with less severe sanctions: non-complying firms must generally explain in their annual reports why they fell short and what they plan to do about it). The European Commission is considering imposing quotas across the EU. Malaysia has imposed a 30% quota for new appointments to boards, and Brazil a 40% target, though only for state-controlled firms. The governments of several other countries, including Australia, Britain and Sweden, have threatened to impose quotas if firms do not appoint more female directors voluntarily. So why are gender quotas becoming more common?
One reason is a growing impatience with the glacial pace of voluntary change: women are the majority of all graduates almost everywhere in the developed world, but make up a smaller share of the workforce the further up the corporate ladder they go. Another is that Norway’s quota law has not been the disaster some predicted. "As a principle, I don’t like quotas," Ider Kreutzer, the former chief executive of Storebrand, an insurance group, told the Financial Times the year after the law came into force. "But I have not been able to find any big problems with the legislation in practice." Some had worried that they would actually decrease diversity by forcing companies to dive for the same small pool of eligible women, nicknamed the "golden skirts". In fact, Norway still has more "golden trousers"—male directors are twice as likely to sit on more than one board. Nor did it obviously lead to less qualified boards: female Norwegian board members are more likely to have a degree than male ones.