Quotas : for or against ?

Do you think governments should set quotas for women on boards, as is currently planned by the government in Norway?

yes 55,32 %
no 44,68 %

Total votes/respondents : 141

This poll was open from mid April to mid May 2005

It is accepted more and more that diversity is an important business ingredient which brings efficiency and performance to organizations and boards, and better connects them to their markets. But what is the best means to have more women reach board level?

In 2002, the Norwegian government set the objective to appoint women to at least 40% of boardroom seats, with deadlines of 2004 for state owned companies, and 2005 for listed private companies; in case this objective was not reached by voluntary means, it could become a law in June this year.

To fuel discussion, here is a list of arguments regarding the quota debate, many of which go beyond the question of boards to cover many aspects of employment, and in particular those of hiring and promotion.

Pros and Cons of Quotas

Pros

Law can help to speed up the mentalities change: the compulsory nature of quotas will help create new reflexes

Women will be able to concentrate on their careers, and will not have to develop double efforts to address both their professional objectives and the gender barriers

Culture of unequal treatment has become so ingrained that people either accept it as a norm or are unwilling to challenge the status quo; strong steps (measures) such as quotas are then needed

Where cooptation is the rule, reproducing the existing model, an external influence is needed to help set-up the new diversity model

Cons

Quotas might depreciate value of women, implying their successes can be ascribed to quotas. It portrays women as a species that must be protected, and promotes the “victim” stereotype

Quotas are against the labour or equality laws in several countries, where they are considered discriminatory

Quotas might hinder the efficient working on the market, by bending recruitment rules based on the right skills selection

If quotas are set for women, there will also be pressure to set them for any minority (race, religion, social, age) – although one can only be dismayed women are considered as a minority!…

Other ways to diversity?

In affirmative action strategies, the quota represents one of the strongest tools, although it may be applied with various intensity:

In theory, equal opportunity would be 50%: in practice, quotas are set at different levels, such as 30% imposed by the Swiss National Council for corporations in which the Swiss Confederation has a share, or 40% for Norwegian corporations

quotas can be applied to different stages of the selection process, from the candidate pool to the team arrangements: the European Space Agency seeks female candidates when hiring and requires justification in the selection process; IBM asks managers to consider women candidates at every promotion.

binding quotas can be implemented either by law, such as the ‘Geschlechterquote’ (gender equality quota : work council must be gender-distributed identically to workforce) in Germany, and as potentially done in Norway , or by spurring pressure coming from government incentives and corporate social responsibility (CSR) rating agencies

Wait one more decade?

There are now many highly educated women (many surveys even find they represent the majority of graduates), with the right experience to fill the top jobs and board seats. In fact, the biggest issue may well be that increased board presence for women will mean reduced access for men to the top positions; a cultural change which will be hard to impose. But unless voluntary targets or legal quotas are introduced in one way or another, it will take several decades before women will be properly represented at each professional level.

More resources

A very complete overview of European initiatives is available on the website of the European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO):
Gender mainstreaming in industrial relations

Cécile Demailly
EuropeanPWN
May 2005

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