The political debate on gender equality in employment has been re-launched in the past decade by re-addressing an “old” issue - the resort to gender quotas for increasing the participation of women in corporate boards. The advocates of legal quotas underline the effectiveness due to their constraining strength, while its opponents disapprove of an illegitimate intervention into entrepreneurial freedom. Sceptical observers nevertheless throw a doubt on their impact in achieving overall more equal gender relations due to its limited scope.
Drawing on analyses of existing quota policies in Norway, Sweden, Germany and France, we address the design of policies and instruments that would effectively promote gender equality in the workplace.
Whether a legal quota regulation is necessary or not for achieving gender equality on corporate boards is particularly interesting when comparing the Scandinavian neighbours: Norway designed early a most constraining legal quota and is therefore considered as the European lighthouse on the issue, while no formal regulation exist in Sweden –where the threat to introduce one is however reiterated as often as necessary. Whilst the strong Norwegian regulation has become a role model for both German and French policymakers, Germany was long unable to decide on the design of its quota regulation whilst France recently implemented first a rather symbolic legal regulation, becoming more convincing in a second breath.
Comparing the array of instruments designed for such a quota policy makes clear that a smart combination of hierarchical and cooperative instruments is a necessary pre-condition for more gender equality in corporate boards. A coherent and consistent gender policy regime is moreover considered as a favourable terms for any effective equal opportunity policy. However, our comparison suggests that substantive progress in employment equality cannot be attained and maintained without compulsory statutory rules and a continuous and transparent monitoring of policy outcomes.
