Gender Quotas in Public Company Boards, 2009

Inclusion of women in working life and business is the overall theme of the project. This is studied in relation to legislation on equal opportunities for boards of public limited companies. Legal regulation of gender representation on company boards has been the subject of public debate in Norway for more than 10 years. Legal study on the conditions for such legislation followed two governments before parliamentary resolution in 2003. The proposal was highly controversial, and was seen as another Norwegian gender equality policy invention. No other country has intervened in the recruitment of top positions in such ways. There is considerable international attention to this legal reform, and it is of great importance that such a radical measure is illuminated and documented. A broad analysis of the reform will shed light on the opportunities and constraints for policy intervention for inclusion in the workplace, gender equality policy in a broader sense, as well as giving deeper understanding of theoretical issues related to property rights and government intervention in the private spheres. This project is an umbrella over two separate groups of subprojects. The first part focuses on gender representation on company boards from the efforts of inclusion in the workplace, and also considers the possible practical effects of these measures (subprojects 1, 2, 3, 4). The second part contains the theoretical scope and deals with fundamental notions of democracy, property and political governance, based on the consensus of the political parties and the business community at a high level, interpreted on the basis of relevant political philosophy (subproject 5, 6 and 7).