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JUMP offers women practical tools to help them realise their professional |
and personal aspirations, and supports companies and organisations that wish to promote better gender diversity within their management.
BLOG
The web platform for advancing women in the workplace
A multilingual web portal for advancing women in the workplace and a bi-weekly e-newsletter sent to over 163.000 contacts and databases of active women.
ACADEMY
Workshops to empower and advance women
The woman’s academy offers women practical workshops to develop and improve their assets and professional knowledge as well as advice to improve and preserve their mental, physical and financial capital.
FORUM
The event for advancing women in the workplace
The annual European event in Brussels dedicated to the professional lives of women and their career planning.
AWARD
Executives promoting gender balanced business
The AXA Wo_Men@Work Award honours a business leader who has been a fervent supporter of male/female equality in management in the course of their career.
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With the support of
Women-Friendly Companies
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A MUST SEEN BBC World News documentary sponsored by "The Open University" - produced and directed by by Claudine Parrish
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“Diversity is extremely important, because what you want around the boardroom table is different perspectives. If for instance, you have 12 goalkeepers in a football team, then you won’t let in many goals but you won’t score any!”
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Why Women Mean Business takes the economic arguments for change to the heart of the corporate world. This powerful new book analyses the opportunities available to companies that really understand what motivates women in the workplace and the marketplace. Find out how companies that learn to adapt to women will be better able to respond to the challenge of an ageing workforce and the demands of the next generation of knowledge workers.
Buy this book
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A Woman's Place is in the Boardroom was the first step on a journey. This book is the second. In the three years since the first book was published, the authors have become even more convinced that the general problem, the absence of women from top strategic decision-making bodies, is among the most important problems of our time.
Buy this book
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I want to dedicate a special newsletter to Norway’s first outcome of the 40% quotas law. A few days ago I had the chance to take part in The international Board Impact Conference in Oslo. This conference brought together board members, executives, investors and researchers to discuss and learn from the experiences of Norwegian corporate boards of directors, which now have more than 40% of females on their boards. The aim was for the conference to serve as a vehicle to help the broader international community to continue shaping global boardroom diversity in the future. The conference was organised by Elin Hurvenes.
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Elin Hurvenes, Founder of the Professional Boards Forum
Elin Hurvenes founded the Professional Boards Forum in 2003 in response to the Norwegian “Quota Law” requiring company boards to have at least 40% women directors. The Professional Boards Forum brings together chairmen and experienced business women with a view to expand networks and raise the visibility of women board candidates.
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The law demands that public shareholder-owned corporations (called ASAs in Norway) must have an average of at least 40% women and 40% men on their boards or face dissolution. Today, female representation on boards has risen from around 6% in 2002 to more than 40%, according to a new study by the Norwegian Institute for Social Research (Institutt for samfunnsforskning, ISF) and the number of women board members in Norway has more than doubled.
The law came into force in 2008 and related to 7,000 seats on boards. The compulsory percentage of gender diversity varies according to the number of seats concerned: 1 in 2 or 3 seats; 38% of 8 seats; and 40% of more than 8 seats.
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| Ansgar Gabrielsen — The man that started it all... |
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Norway was the first country in the world to implement board quotas and subsequently the numbers of women on corporate boards have risen from only 6% in 2002 to over 40% today. — "By not utilising the full talent pool I knew Norway as a nation was missing out. My ambition as a Minister was to force companies to rethink their board recruiting practices. I believe we succeeded," Ansgar Gabrielsen comments. Listen to his exclusive interview on why and how he pushed for this change, as well as his advice for spreading the experience.
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Exclusive Interview with Ansgar Gabrielsen
While Minister of Trade and Industry, Gabrielsen was first criticized for his suggestion about a law that requires 40% of the board members in Norwegian companies to be female.
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Vibeke Heidenreich and Mari Teigen of the Norwegian Institute for Social Research — ISF presented the results of the first research report carried out on boards since the quota law came into force. Download it here (available only in Norwegian).
Position: Only 3% of chairs are held by women.
Age: Women are younger than men on boards. The majority are less than 50. The older men on boards were not replaced by women but when recruiting new members they recruted women.
Education: Women tend to be better educated than men. There are fewer of them with science and technology degrees but more with law degrees.
Experience: More women than men are managers in companies or come from academia but more men than women are business owners.
Recruitment: Women were recruited in the same manner as men, mostly through professional networks. The phenomena of the concentration of power and the so-called “golden skirts”, which defines a number of women who serve on several different boards at the same time, is a very common idea. The research proved that golden skirts was a men’s wear with 62% holding only one board position instead of 79% of Women!
The more visible and skilled the women the more advantages they had. For example, as the research suggests, these women always choose the biggest companies.
Since the law on quota, the number of public-listed companies has fallen. The research highlighted that only 33% of companies choosing not to list on the stock exchange did so to evade the quota regulation.
Since the law was enforced, there has been no further debate on gender diversity in Norway but the balance is still far off: the quota law did not change the number of women CEOs (2%) or their presence in the Executive Committee (10%). The private limited companies that didn’t have to comply with the law saw an increase of women on their boards from 15% in 2004 to 17% in 2009!
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| The consequences of more gender-balanced boards |
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“The quota law has opened boardrooms to an extent that we’ve never seen before,” said Mari Teigen, research director for ISF.
Sixty percent of male board members questioned for the ISF research said there had been no major changes to board operations since the law took effect but there were some improvements: “more discussions” and “new perspectives”.
Several top Norwegian business leaders said they were “opposed in principle” to quotas and still are, but believed the law has been effective. Fears of not finding enough qualified women to fill board seats proved unfounded. “I’m in principle against quotas,” said Harald Norvik, chairman of Telenor and former CEO of Statoil. “But I’m happy with the result,” he added.
John Bernander of employers’ organisation NHO (the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprises), said they had urged their members to “clean up their own acts” and promote women in management as well as on boards. “We are more in favour of freedom for our business owners than government quotas or regulation, but when the law came into force, the competence was there.”
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| Women on boards – a global trend in Europe |
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Following Norway´s lead several European countries are now taking steps to pass legislation. At the end of October, France passed a law securing a 40% female presence on their corporate boards by 2016.
Canada is currently in the process of writing a proposal to achieve greater board diversity. Spain has already implemented a quota system, albeit a voluntary one. The UK government has called for a review of the status of women on boards and there is growing debate on the issue in the Netherlands and Germany.
“Just do it, go for it,” urged Tone Bjørnov, board member of several stock-listed companies.
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| What the European Commission says |
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Viviane Reding Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for Justice Fundamental Rights and Citizenship
« To get the engine of growth going again Europe should make better use of women’s talents. I have not been an advocate of quotas for women in senior business posts in the pastbut given the lack of progress in this areawe might in the future have to consider taking initiatives at the European level. I plan to meet with the chief executives of major publicly listed European companies in spring 2011 to discuss the situation and the scope for determined self-regulation. Depending on the outcome of this dialogue with industryI will consider whether further initiatives will be necessary in 2012.»
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Ansgar Gabrielsen, the government minister from the Conservative Party who first launched the board diversity law in Norway, said he never viewed the law as “an export product” but still believes “it’s crazy” for any country to only have a small percentage of its female population represented on boards. For him, it was mostly about return on investment.
Ansgar Gabrielsen, the government minister from the Conservative Party who first launched the board diversity law in Norway, said he never viewed the law as “an export product” but still believes “it’s crazy” for any country to only have a small percentage of its female population represented on boards. For him, it was mostly about return on investment.
“We have invested billions educating our daughters as much as our sons,” Gabrielsen said. “Their ongoing exclusion from corporate boards, which are an important part of our society just doesn’t make economic sense,” he added.
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| Women on board experiences |
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UNITED KINGDOM
Peninah Thomson, FTSE 100 Cross-Company Mentoring Programme
The FTSE 100 Cross-Company Mentoring Programme is beginning to have an impact upon the rate of appointment of women to senior executive and non-executive roles in the UK. There is more to do, of course, but this innovative, business-to-business initiative is delivering results.
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FRANCE
Anne Bouverot, Executive VP, Mobile services, France Telecom Orange
Anne Bouverot is a senior executive at France Telecome Orange. She has worked in Europe and the USA and recently been part of the FTSE100 Cross-Mentoring Programme in which FTSE100 chairmen mentor executive women. She is currently involved in setting up a similar programme in France. In 2008, Anne was appointed a Non-Executive Director of Groupama.
Listen to the interview in which she describes her experience and the importance of getting a “critical mass” of women on boards as well as how to implement an action plan to get a board position:
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NETHERLANDS
Carien van der Laan, Woman Capital
Woman Capital is an executive search firm specialised in women. Their focus is finding women for top management and supervisory positions.
Listen to her recommendations and the state of art of quotas in her country:
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