Wanting
This And That
By Amrita Nandy-Joshi
28 April, 2006
Countercurrents.org
2006
has been inaugurated with cheering cries and hurrahs. Well, the gaiety
was not just to do with the arrival of a brand new year and the usual
confetti parties. It has even lasted well beyond a night’s ‘spirited’
celebrations. This calendar year has brought along momentous signs for
optimism and comfort—the victory of women as heads of nations
in Chile and Liberia, quick on the heels of Angela Merkel’s win
in the German national elections towards the fag end of 2005. Besides
women gaining political power, there has been another bit of news that
deserves standing ovation—the radical move by Norway’s government
to ensure that in the next two years, forty percent of the board members
of the country’s large, publicly traded private companies be women.
And there’s more…the penalty for nonconformity is the disbandment
of the defaulting corporation.
Kudos! From the parliament
to corporate boardrooms, women’s greater entry into erstwhile
male bastions can be assured by such measures. It is said that in expectation
of the law taking effect, the past couple of years have seen the number
of women in Norwegian corporate boards double up—from roughly
8 percent to 16 percent. However, reports state that not everyone clapped
to this piece of news. The Norwegian government is said to have resisted
strong opposition from many Norwegian businessmen. Perhaps it is such
hostility towards the idea of women’s presence in businesses that
forced the government to pass a law, since voluntary measures to increase
their representation in business had failed. (The Norwegian Gender Equality
Act was adopted way back in 1978 and prohibits all discrimination on
the grounds of gender and is applicable to all areas of society. Part
of the Act was the establishment of a Gender Equality Ombud, an independent
body responsible for enforcing the Act, free of charge. Moreover, the
government-funded Gender Equality Centre too has attempted to monitor,
promote and mainstream gender equality and equal opportunity measures
in all areas of society). Interestingly enough, statistics suggest that
some 40 percent of students at Norway's business schools are women!
Clearly, men’s corporate club had long built a strong glass ceiling
which could only be broken by a law such as this. Of course, such ceilings
are a truism outside Norway as well.
Though the merits of such
a law cannot be overstated, the corridors that lead women into the board
rooms are still paved with speed-breakers—some smooth, others
rough, many intangible. The work place continues to be designed for
men. The hours and its demands of single-minded devotion sideline other
roles that women might want to play such as motherhood (yet another
task that asks for total time and attention).
One still has to come at
the price of the other. Female labour-force participation rates might
have increased while marriage and fertility rates decreased. Causality
or correlation, the two do interconnect and interact. High-powered careers
might have forced many accomplished women to opt out of their sparkling
careers to make a dash for marriage, family (lest biological deadlines
be missed), and eventually, happiness outside work. Though the number
of women graduates, MBAs, lawyers and doctors have risen in the last
few decades, what has not changed are the ambivalent pressures acting
on women’s minds.
The ‘superwoman’
myth is as active as ever, nurtured by a market-friendly media. What
is needed are genuinely family-friendly policies. Parental leave, family
services, etc. have eased the strife a bit but their palpable efficacy
has been questioned. They are primarily geared towards working women,
thereby creating incentives for women to shift from the informal labour
of child care and household management to paid employment, thus taking
one further away from the goal of quality life. The early years of childhood
are critical for social and cognitive development but a late start in
working life lessens the likelihood of rising to the top of the ladder,
especially in high-demand careers of business.
Performing equally well at
both the ends of the work-family continuum has always been an extraordinarily
challenging task. So, while head-hunting firms get busy looking for
suitable women board members for Norway’s approximately 519 private
corporations, some heed should also be paid to the trade-offs of pursuing
two different callings in life, of the legitimate desire and demand
of wanting this and that.