One of the things which is being pointed at at present is the way in which women are seemingly under represented on corporate boards. This is not something unique to the US of course: it's a general observation about the western world at present. There's also a certain amount of research out there that shows that companieswhich have more women on their boards do better. This could in fact be true, although I rather suspect it's part of how people are counting the numbers. The economists' answer here is that if women do indeed increase corporate performance then companies will naturally put women on said boards. That they don't do so is perhaps evidence that this is simply a correlation, not a causative point. Put these two things together and you'll not take long to see that a possible solution is to insist that companies should put women on boards, this would therefore raise the performance of all companies. So, let us look at what has happened in Norway, where they did indeed change the law so as to force companies to have 40% women on their boards.

Dittmar and her colleague Kenneth Ahern studied what happened after Norway required public-limited firms to have at least 40% of board seats filled by women in 2003. Voluntary compliance in the country failed, so the law made it compulsory in 2006, with a two year transition period. “Boards are chosen in order to increase shareholder wealth,” says Dittmar. “Placing restrictions on the composition of a board will reduce value.” Dittmar and Ahern’s study found that when a board had a 10% increase in the number of women, the value of the company dropped. The bigger the change to the structure of the board, the bigger the fall in returns.

Ah, so it doesn't work then. Or more accurately it isn't the having of women on the boards which matters, it's which women you have on boards. My reading of it is that yes, it's true, a woman does have to be both bright and determined to get onto a board. And of course bright and determined people are just those you want on a board. Rather, than, say, those who are not bright and determined but who are there just because they are women. So, err, no, quotas for women on the boards of companies don't sound like a very good idea, do they?