To Meet Norway’s Quotas, a Crash Course in Board Business

OSLO - WHEN Anne-Sofie Risasen joined the Norwegian technology company Evry last year, she already had an impressive résumé. Ms. Risasen, a multilingual computer science graduate, spent years working for the French consulting firm Capgemini before taking a senior role at Microsoft here, where she managed more than 150 workers across Norway.

But Ms. Risasen wanted to raise her game.

So last September, Ms. Risasen, 43 and the mother of two, signed up for an executive boot camp. Over the last seven months, she has taken leadership classes at a local business school, attended networking events and taken a battery of aptitude tests to measure her strengths and weaknesses.

“For me, it was a tactical move,” said Ms. Risasen at Evry’s headquarters in a snow-filled business park on the outskirts of the Norwegian capital. “The main reason to take part was to become a board member.”

Started in 2003, the boot camp, Female Future, aims to train the country’s next generation of directors.

The 16-day program, which runs over 10 months, is part business school, part career coach. In all-day workshops, the women are given crash courses on being a director, including training in corporate governance and leadership. Outside trainers also try to bolster confidence by coaxing the women into sharing stories from their own careers, so they can see the commonality in their experiences.

Since its founding, the Female Future program has helped roughly two-thirds of its 1,300 participants secure senior management positions or board memberships. In December, Ms. Risasen was promoted to run Evry’s public sector unit, overseeing 500 employees. She is hoping the training will also put her in line to join the boards of her company’s subsidiaries when she finishes the course in June.

“Now, Evry’s top management knows I have these skills,” she said.

The program is a core part of the country’s diversity efforts.

In 2003, Norwegian politicians passed a law that requires 40 percent of all publicly listed company boards to be made up of women. Norway now has one of the highest levels of female board participation in the world, roughly 36 percent for public and private companies. That compares with just 14 percent at the largest American companies, according to the research organization GMI Ratings.

“To change people’s habits, you have to do something radical,” said Tove Selnes, 43, an executive vice president at the Norwegian Internet browser company Opera Software who completed the Female Future program in 2007 and now sits on two boards. “Bringing women on boards is good for business. It adds a different perspective to how decisions are made.”

Now, the rest of Europe is following Norway’s lead. Countries like France and Italy have passed similar laws to increase the number of female directors. The European Union announced plans in November to set goals for all publicly listed companies to do the same by the end of the decade, though Germany and Britain have both voiced opposition to the proposed rule.

Legislating for diversity can have its limits.

While the Norwegian law has opened up board positions to more women, Norway still lags behind other Western countries in promoting women to senior executive roles. Around 20 percent of the country’s top corporate jobs are held by women, compared with 31 percent in Germany, according to research from the accounting firm Grant Thornton.

Researchers also have questioned whether adding women to corporate boards leads to better financial performance. Others have raised concerns that a small number of senior Norwegian women â€" derided as the Golden Skirts because they now make a living solely from board memberships â€" have scooped up the majority of the new board seats, leaving many qualified women unable to find positions as directors.

“The Golden Skirts have replaced the old boys network,” said Morten Huse, a professor at the BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo. He added that the number of women who occupy more than three board positions is triple the number of men.

The Female Future program has an unlikely backer.

When the legislation was proposed, the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise was one of the most vocal opponents of the country’s quota law. The group lobbied against the law, saying companies â€" not the government â€" should have the right to choose their directors.

The trade body still opposes the law, but concedes that the efforts have increased the number of female directors.

The group asks its corporate members to nominate potential candidates for Female Future who show leadership potential. The course draws on the talent pool from both public and private companies, primarily from Oslo. The trade organization pays 60 percent of the $8,500 fee for each woman in the program. The participating companies and the Norwegian government pick up the remaining cost.

“We do not believe in the quota system, but we want to help qualified women find roles on boards,” said Kristina Jullum Hagen, equality and diversity adviser at the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise, who runs Female Future and is a participant in the current program.

As part of the boardroom boot camp this year, Ms. Risasen of Evry and 25 other participants meet regularly to share experiences from their day jobs. The topics range from how to build the right business network to the best way to ask for a promotion. At the end of the course, the participants must pass a three-day exam on the role of boards in corporate governance.

Despite a successful career in human resources, Ms. Selnes of Opera Software did not have a large number of contacts across the Norwegian business community. Since finishing the program, Ms. Selnes has tapped Female Future graduates for potential job candidates at her company, and landed a board position at the Oslo affiliate of the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise.

“It’s not about friendship, it’s about networking,” Ms. Selnes said, adding that she still met frequently with her Female Future colleagues.

The program also has fostered previously unknown ambitions.

When Torhild Barlaup joined Female Future in 2008, she did not think she had the skills to be a director. Although she was a senior manager at a Norwegian car importer, Ms. Barlaup, 44, said she lacked the self-confidence to approach her superiors about such opportunities.

Soon after finishing the course, Ms. Barlaup told her managers that she was ready to take on board positions. While she said her bosses were initially surprised, they quickly found roles for her at subsidiaries that faced challenges similar to those that Ms. Barlaup had addressed in her own division.

“Before, I never would have asked for it,” said Ms. Barlaup, who is now the chief executive of the Norwegian division of the Scandinavian auto parts maker Meca. “The program created an interest that I didn’t know I had.”