Norway Quota Conference To Be Held in 2010 - Building Gender Balanced Business

“Women on Boards” – International Conference, Oslo

• Norway offers a unique insight into the bottom line impact of having more women serving at senior management levels in business.

• As a result of a proposal made by Ansgar Gabrielsen in 2002, when he was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, six hundred Norwegian companies eventually were faced with a law calling on them to increase the proportion of women on their boards to 40% or face possible closure or delisting from the Oslo Stock Exchange.

• This shock tactic (backed by law at the end of 2007) forced companies to act, such that they went from having 3% of their boards made up of women in 1993 to 43% by September 2008.

• In the rest of the world, the percentages are still low. In the UK, for example, only 12% of directors of FTSE100 companies are women. In the US, only 3% of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are women.

• Norway, therefore, provides a fascinating study in gender balance and its potential impact on the bottom line.

• The Oslo conference will provide a unique opportunity to hear from the politicians and the business people, as well as receive detailed information on the latest preliminary research on the quota law.

More information on the event and how to register will be published here as soon as it is available.