Norway's businesswomen and the boardroom bias debate

Article here. Excerpt:

'...Business experts have expressed scepticism that the EU could impose uniform restrictions on such diverse national working cultures.

Kenneth Ahern, a professor of finance from the University of Michigan, doubted whether Britain was ready to make the necessary financial sacrifice to push women onto boards. His own research on Norway, published last year, showed that "the quota led to younger and less experienced boards, and deterioration in operating performance, consistent with less capable boards."

He told The Sunday Telegraph: "In Norway, they knew that the value of their companies would drop, but society there cared more about equality than finance. It was a conscious decision.

"For the EU to make such an important moral choice, across such a variety of countries, is a very big ask indeed. I could see there being real resistance to obligatory quotas from countries such as Germany and the UK, which prize the financial output extremely highly." '