Gender Quotas for Corporate Boards in Norway

27 Pages Posted: 11 Jun 2015

See all articles by Mari Teigen

Mari Teigen

Institute for Social Research, Norway

Date Written: 2015

Abstract

The gender quota reform for corporate boards, first adopted in Norway in 2003 and fully implemented from 2008, has had great repercussions. A wave of diffusion of corporate board quota legislation has swept across Europe, and some other parts of the world. This paper departs from the ongoing European processes of gender quotas for corporate boards being in the making, and examines how the Norwegian expansion of gender quota regulation from the public sector to the corporate world was made possible. The strong tradition in Norway to introduce gender quota arrangements to promote gender balance is emphasized in particular. The paper addresses national preconditions and processes. Central questions are: How does this reform fit with the Norwegian gender equality policy tradition? And what external factors – and institutional tensions – facilitated the policy process? What kind of problem(s) did the gender quota legislation aim to solve? What were the main positions in public and political debates surrounding the policy process? What was the role of policy agency for the result of the policy process?

Keywords: Gender quotas; Gender balance; Corporate boards; Gender equality policy; Economic decision-making

Suggested Citation

Teigen, Mari, Gender Quotas for Corporate Boards in Norway (2015). EUI Department of Law Research Paper No. 2015/22, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2617172 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2617172

Mari Teigen (Contact Author)

Institute for Social Research, Norway ( email )

Munthesgate 31
0260 Oslo
Norway

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