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Conquer private8/11/2023 Board members have been recruited mainly through the ‘old boys’ network’, and these channels change very slowly,” says Fredrik Engelstad, a professor of sociology. But contempt for women is not necessarily the reason that they didn’t get in before. “There were many talented women who stood ready to move in when the quota scheme was introduced. In addition, the reform probably gave some men a push to recommend their female colleagues for board seats,” says Heidenreich. A situation arose in which male managers acted as mentors and door openers to a much greater degree than previously. “When the law came, women became motivated to talk about their own ambitions with their closest superiors. Then they began to ask why they had not been considered good enough before,” says the researcher, and adds that the work done by the boards seems to have functioned well during the transition phase. “As time passed, the women got confirmation that their background and expertise were good enough to be selected for a board seat. Became quota supportersĭuring the course of the reform, several of Heidenreich’s informants changed their position and became supporters of the gender quota law. In other words, there are more men than women with family ties to the companies whose boards they sit on,” explains Heidenreich. “Many people thought the companies would recruit women who had family ties to the companies in order to reach the target, but it turns out that the women who have been recruited to the boards are more independent than the men. The survey also shows that the women are seen as qualified to sit on the board by the other board members. Most of the board members, men and women alike, are economists, lawyers and engineers with management experience. The women are also younger and better educated on average than the men. ISF has conducted a survey which shows that the new female board members are just as competent as the men. Now that the target of 40 percent women on the boards has been reached, it appears that this has not happened. One of the main objections to the reform was precisely that it would force the companies to lower their requirements for board members in order to recruit enough women. This perception is widespread among those who opposed the law in general. They thought that the reason for the low percentage of women could be that women had a different kind of expertise than what was needed to get a seat on a board,” says Heidenreich. “The women I spoke with wanted men and women to be treated the same, and they felt that free competition in the business sector worked as it should. She says that many of them were strongly opposed to the quota law before it entered into force. In her doctoral project, she interviewed 18 women about their inclusion on the boards of public limited companies. Vibeke Heidenreich, a sociologist and historian, has been associated with the project at ISF as a research fellow. The project, which has been ongoing since 2008, is now completed, and the researchers recently presented their findings at a concluding conference at the House of Literature in Oslo. Inclusion? for the Institute for Social Research (ISF). Together with her colleagues, Teigen has analysed the consequences of the controversial gender quota law in the umbrella project Gender Quotas in Boards of Large Joint Stock Companies. It’s rumoured that Merkel supports quotas in Germany, while Cameron is having a hard time making up his mind in Great Britain,” says sociologist and Research Director Mari Teigen enthusiastically. Now laws similar to Norway’s have been passed in Spain, Iceland, France, Belgium, The Netherlands and Italy. Gender quotas for private business suddenly became one of the hottest political debates in Europe. “The gender quota law was super radical when it came! It could have been a non-issue, but instead it caused bold headlines in The Times and Der Spiegel.
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