Norwegian legislator Laila Daavoey has introduced a bill that would require Norway’s top 600 companies or so to create a quota system for filling board positions. Comapnies that fail to fill at least 40 percent of their corporate board positions by 2005 would face financial penalties begining in 2007.
This follows an announcement in November by Sweden’s Vice Prime Minister Margareta Winberg that Sweden would begin taking action against companies that failed to increase female representation on their corporate boards from the curretn 8 percent to 25 percent by 2004.
Daavoey offered up a saying which she apparently highlights the need for such drastic actions, but actualy does a nice job of pointing out the idiocy of such quota systems. According to Daavoey,
There will not be equality until you have incompetent women in the boardroom.
That certainly is a lofty goal worth fighting for.
Maggie Gallagher had a better comment on this proposed regimen in an op-ed,
In Europe, it appears that in the name of democracy, elites are pursuing an autocratic centralized power, seeking economic control and social regimentation. They seem to have no hesitation about using the law to forcibly suppress opposition. Call it Eurofascism, lite. Only they call it democracy.
Sources:
Norway eyes law to shatter glass ceiling. Lizette Alvarez, Contra-Costa Times, July 18, 2003.
Eurofascism, Lite. Maggie Gallagher, Yahoo.Com, July 15, 2003.