So in the midst of recession many companies have finally woken up to the fact that women have a place in their businesses, that women leaders can benefit the bottom line and the economy as a whole.

According to Goldman Sachs more women in the workforce could boost GDP by 21 per cent in Italy, 19 per cent in Spain, 16 per cent in Japan, nine per cent in the US, France and Germany and by eight per cent in the UK.

But we know this.

So now we have convinced companies, how do we get more women into decision-making roles and into the boardrooms?

To quota or not to quota? That is surely the question.

And it is a debate that has divided opinion worldwide, least of all in Europe.

Last week, it was announced that EU Commissioner Viviane Reding’s plans to force all publicly traded companies to have at least 40 per cent of women on their boards by 2020 will be scrapped after EU lawyers ruled that mandatory gender quotas were illegal according to various EU treaties.

Why does this matter? It matters because organisations are like pyramids and there are very few open positions at the top. The presence of women at board-level symbolises their position at decision-making-level. But it is also important not to miss the core issue. The primary danger zone for women professionally lies much further downstream, where the number of working women is much higher.

The real support that women need is in those more junior areas, 7-10 years into their careers.

But more women on boards has an impact all the way down the line.

So the question is, how can we turn the current 86 per cent “male quota” into an equal representation of women and men in boardrooms across Europe? And hopefully in less time than the 50 years it would at the current rate of progress.

Boardrooms do not become gender balanced by chance. On the contrary, we can see that where there have been few attempts to redress the situation things are getting worse.

For example, a third of all quoted companies in Europe have male-only boards.

The average percentage of women in boardrooms across Europe is 14 per cent but that varies from over 40 per cent in Norway to less than five per cent in countries like Malta, Cyprus and Hungary.

And it’s not just a European problem.

In the US, women hold around 16 per cent of board seats and chair just two per cent of Fortune 500 boardrooms. Elsewhere in the world, it is even worse.

Legislation

Five EU Member States, namely Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, as well as two other European countries (Norway and Iceland) have adopted legislation to increase the representation of women on corporate boards.

The laws differ in terms of the targets, the deadlines for reaching them and the sanctions proposed for breaching the law, but at least something is being done.

Several other countries, including Finland, Denmark and Ireland, have had targets for state-owned companies for several years now. The latest country to do this was Austria in 2011.

In these countries, however, no sanctions are foreseen. In Finland the target was reached and now women represent 45 per cent of state company boards.

The EU Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs, Viviane Reding, strongly wanted a proposal that would sanction quoted and state-owned companies whose supervisory boards are composed of less than 40 per cent of women by 2020.

In the two years since she made the proposal, only a handful of companies had signed the pledge forcing Reding to say this March: “I regret to see that despite our calls, self-regulation so far has not brought about satisfactory results."

A few weeks after her announced legislation proposal, a letter calling for a re-think was sent to the Commission by nine national governments (including Germany which opposes any binding legislation).

Last week, due to lack of support from her fellow commissioners, Reding was forced to drop her plans.

She has said that she will attempt to make another proposal next month, but this is likely to be a substantially watered-down version.

The Norwegian Model

Norway was the first country in the world to implement board quotas, increasing the number of women on corporate boards from only six per cent in 2002 to over 40 per cent today.  

“By not utilising the full talent pool I knew Norway as a nation was missing out,” Ansgar Gabrielsen, the former Norwegian minister for trade and secretary who initiated the quota, told Jump during an exclusive interview.

“My ambition as a Minister was to force companies to rethink their board recruiting practices. I believe we succeeded.” 

The progress towards gender balance is slower among board members with executive power.

The quota legislation in Norway was successful in increasing the number of women on boards, but female CEOs and chairs remain scarce.

As yet, there is no legislation in place in Europe to address this particular issue.

Ansgar Gabrielsen, said that while he never viewed the law as “an export product” he still thinks it is “crazy” for any country to only have a small percentage of its female population represented on boards.

“We have invested billions educating our daughters as much as our boys. Their ongoing exclusion from corporate boards, such an important part of our society, just didn’t make economic sense.”

Neither progress nor equality has ever been achieved without legislation accompanied by sanctions.

It’s not quotas that are the scandal but the paltry number of women on boards that is the real scandal.

That and the inability of people to change their attitudes without being told to do so.