Norway Wants Women on Boards

Bulging with money from oil fields, the Norway sovereign wealth fund is one of the largest in the world at $1.4 trillion. It describes itself as the largest market investor in the world, which is hard to prove. However, it does have muscle. It wants more women on boards and for boards to cut “excessive” executive pay. It has not worked, given the lack of progress at these public companies, which are spread worldwide. (These are the countries where most people are not biased against women.)
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According to Reuters, the fund has ownership in over 9,000 companies. Reuters writes about the threat to these: “This year we said (to companies) that ‘if you don’t have even one woman on the board, we will vote against you.’ We will step that up next year,” said Carine Smith Ihenacho, the fund’s chief governance and compliance officer.
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The Norway fund is not the only organization that has pressured public companies on this matter. At one point, California had a law that public corporations must do so. A court blocked this. Mega investors Blackrock made a similar attempt. While women’s board membership has increased over the past several years, they are still woefully underrepresented.
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The primary argument about women not being on public company boards is that too few have the resumes to make them candidates. Female board members are often drawn from top jobs at companies or the private sector. Some are from nonprofits, others are from high-level government jobs and others are former government officials. This is a very large pool when taken together.
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The pressure from Norway is unlikely to work well. Similar efforts have largely been failures.