Feminizing Capital: A Corporate Imperative

Authors

Darren Rosenblum, St. John's University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Berkeley Business Law Journal

Publication Date

2009

Volume

6.1

First Page

55

DOI

https://doi.org/10.15779/Z388S0H

Abstract

(Excerpt)

Recent economic events have turned the relationship between the public sector and the corporate world upside-down. The as-yet-unnamed financial crisis led governments to intervene in the private sector at levels not seen since the Great Depression. This crisis has exposed the need for new leadership in the corporate world and a new influx of public ideas in the private sector. Gendered understandings of economic relations have surfaced, with some arguing that testosterone encourages excessive greed in boom cycles and fear in bust cycles and that "the meltdown's a guy thing." Beyond allegations of causing the crisis, men have received the brunt of the trauma from the shrinking economy. From March 2008 through February 2009, unemployment for men in the United States outpaced that of women, irrespective of education. Some estimates suggest that men have suffered 82% of the job losses in the U.S. during this economic crisis. Indeed, women appear poised to become the majority of the work force for the first time in our nation's history. However, they still lag far behind men in corporate boardrooms. Not surprisingly, in the wake of financial disaster, some have called for fresh management with female faces, "mistresses of the universe," to take charge of the situation. Iceland, for example, named two women to "clean up [the] male mess," along with the world's first openly lesbian prime minister to institute a recovery plan after its unprecedented economic slide. These events confirm the role gender equality can play in the renewed interchange between the public and private sectors.

Norway's Corporate Board Quota Law ("CBQ") exposes the opportunities and complexities in rethinking the public/private relationship through gender. The CBQ mandated that all publicly-listed corporations in Norway repopulate their boards to include at least forty percent women by January 1, 2008. Norway's dramatic intervention sought to feminize corporate leadership in one fell swoop, and it succeeded in doing so. Noncompliance would result in dissolution of the corporation. This draconian penalty induced all covered corporations to comply. Over twenty years ago, Scandinavian countries adopted quotas to remedy electoral inequality. At the time, they were radical outliers, but now most of the world's countries have followed. As the world's first law to mandate the percentage of female representation on the boards of publicly-traded corporations, the CBQ may again foretell the wider adoption of what is now labeled a radical remedy.

Comments

Available at: https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1122209?v=pdf