State must get on board with gender balance

During Iceland’s economic collapse, Audur Capital was the only bank to survive.

The bank was run by two women based on what they describe as their ‘five feminine values’: be aware of the risks you are taking; tell people the downsides, as well as the upsides, of their investments; emotional due diligence is just as important as financial due diligence; profits should be based upon positive social and economic principles. These appear painfully obvious today but at the peak of the economic boom they were not applied in almost any other financial institution in the world.

Too often the debate about women on boards centres on what extra work women need to do to enter the boardroom. The global excitement about Sheryl Sandberg’s new book Lean In makes some welcome contribution to the debate. But in the midst of asking questions about women’s behaviour we can lose sight of the other barriers which impede access to the boardroom, such as unfriendly work hours, inappropriate work culture and lack of access to the ‘right’ networks.