Sexism in the workplace-Are we still talking about this?!

Business women have made huge gains in the past 30 years but we seem to be at a stand still.
According to an article in Portfolio.com "key indicators such as pay, board seats
and corporate-officer posts all reflect a leveling off or drop in recent years."

Why? What's happened?

Part of the problem is that as a result of the gains women have made and the social awareness around gender issues, sexism has become more subtle and therefore harder to recognize.  For example, often when corporate governance thinks about diversity they think about racial diversity not gender diversity-'because women are equal... aren't they?'

Well we certainly are not equally represented in the boardroom or in the corner office.  So, what do we do now? Norway has come up with a novel idea to solve this problem.

In an article recently released, the International Herald Tribune discussed a 2003 law passed in Norway requiring companies to fill 40 percent of corporate board seats with women by 2008.

When the law was first proposed in 2002, executives were up in arms. They were quoted as saying "that it was a completely ridiculous law and it would never happen." They suggested instead that organic growth was the better option-however if that were the chosen path it would have taken 100 years before there was a significant number of women on executive boards.

In spite of the protests Norway passed the law. And guess what!? It's working! The general consensus is that this diversity is good. In fact, Spain is now considering a similar law. Perhaps the US should jump on the bandwagon? It would certainly bring the issue of sexism in the work place to the fore!