by Came across an interesting post on “golden skirts” which noted that “the European Union has walked back from a proposal to require all publicly listed companies in the EU to fill 40% of board seats with women.” In the piece, it notes the high rates of women in Board leadership positions in the Scandinavian countries. Readers of this blog and ConsumerShift, I hope, were not surprised, and likely made the connection to the high rate of postmodern values in Scandinavia and Northern Europe.
The post chose to focus on a University of Michigan study found that in 2002 when the law was first introduced in Norway, companies saw a 2.6% drop in company value — suggesting this was a result of hiring women with less management skills in order to comply with the law. We won’t take on that argument here, since our focus is on how the emergence of postmodern and integral values is reshaping the landscape of the future. We indeed anticipate a greater role for women in leadership, and are not at all surprised that it is showing up in N. Europe first. I’ve given talks over the years where I’ve urged audiences to “get in touch with their feminine side,” to highlight the more compatible fit of feminine values (whether held by women or men) to the emerging network world, noting that masculine values fit better with the declining hierarchical command-and-control model. Andy Hines
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