From Brooks
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, December 10, 2007
Behind the Rush To Add Women To Norway's Boards
Aker ASA, founded in 1841, is Norway's largest private employer, with around 35,000 employees and annual revenue of roughly $10.90 billion. But until 2004, the company had no female directors.
Today, the industrial holding company has three, and women occupy 13 more seats on the boards of six companies in which Aker holds significant stakes.
What happened? A 2003 law requires every publicly traded company in Norway to have a certain number of women on its board by Jan. 1 or risk being shut down. Exactly how many depends on the board's size, but nationally, the law -- the first of its kind in the world -- aims for women to hold 40% of such directorships.