Firms, Boards and Gender Quotas: Comparative Perspectives

Abstract

Firms, Boards and Gender Quotas: Comparative Perspectives Editors: Fredrik Engelstad and Mari Teigen Volume 29, ISBN: 978-1-78052-672-0, EmeraldPublished in 2012 by Emerald, Firms, Boards and Gender Quotas: Comparative Perspectives tackles a hotly debated topic, the one of inequality in business. Norway was the first country to prescribe gender quotas for the board of directors being soon followed by others. The volume is a comprehensive approach to the implications of gender quotas analyzing them from economic, social and philosophical points of view. It has three parts that deal with serious issues connected to the gender and economic power (Part I), firms and families (Part II), and gender quotas to boards of directors (Part III).According to the editors, most of the studies on gender in economic life focus on male exercise of power within organizations -visible as well as subtle modes of discrimination, depriving women of promotion and even reaching the top positions in large organizations.1 The volume approaches this in several directions, taking into account more factors connected to discrimination as such, to women's lack of ambitions or self-esteem, or to other more general factors connected to culture, to the position or image of women, to historical perspectives, religion etc. This situation is mainly dependent upon the role of women in society as being involved more in bringing up children and taking care of the family's wellbeing.In Chapter 1 : Top Down or Bottom Up? A Cross-national Study of Vertical Occupational Sex Segregation in 12 European Countries, Andrea Schafer, Ingrid Tucci and Karin Gottschall (pp. 3-43) look into the role of family relations and the decision-making process within the household. As they argue: For men being married has a significant positive effect on being in a high-status position. However, this effect is negative for women.1Chapter 2: Modes of Familismi Gender, Family Capitalism and Family Culture by Jorun Solheim, Ragnhild Steen Jensen (pp. 47-84) discusses the similarities and differences of two cases of family firms from Norway (shipping finn) and Italy (silk industry). The authors identify a pattern of marriage and household specific to Norway where both spouses bring property into the marriage. Here, even if women are still legally subordinated to the husbands, they are expected to contribute to the family prosperity. In Italy, on the other hand, they identify the patriarchic desire of men to be succeeded by their sons. According to the authors this desire is linked to an explicit cultural ideology of masculinity, where economic independence is the central value.2Chapter 3: Family, Labour Market Structures and the Dynamics of SelfEmployment in Three Asian Countries: Gender Differences in Self-Employment Entry in Japan, Korea and Taiwan by Hirohisa Takenoshita (pp. 85-112), discusses the case of three countries from East Asia. Here, gender inequality appears in the transition into self-employment as being associated with the institutional contexts of family and labor market. According to the author, family workers in the three countries had considerable disadvantages in becoming self-employed, which implies that female family workers continue to be exploited by self-employed owners, namely, their husbands. In contrast, the effects of marital status, with both sexes, on their transitions into self-employment differed widely among the three countries, reflecting the various barriers to self-employment and the differing conditions for female employment in each country.3In Chapter 4: Gender Quotas on Corporate Boards: On the Diffusion of a Distinct National Policy Reform, Mari Teigen (pp. 115-146) describes the Norwegian reform and analyses the case of other seven countries (Spain, Iceland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Malaysia) that implemented similar gender quotas. If in 2003, The Norwegian parliament adopted a quota law regarding the gender composition of corporate boards, other countries soon followed to take similar measures. …