Let me add to this conversation concerning the relationship between search firms and boards of directors that it should be a close relationship. I've been involved in a number of searches that have had search firms involved. It really is the board's responsibility to articulate clearly to the search firm what the requirements for the candidates are.
I would add to this discussion as well the notion that affirmative action runs along a continuum. We've talked about a range of different measures. If we start from the position that under-representation of women on these important sites of decision-making and cultural formations is a real concern, then we have a series of responses that we could take. They range from things such as the training of women to become competent and skilled to take up these positions to, as we've already seen, outreach programs to look outside your networks and engage with women you don't otherwise run across who would be excellent candidates. You can have a more proactive approach of getting women to apply for the jobs, or you can have some kind of preferential treatment during the hiring, or you can have quotas.
My sense of the literature is that it shows that many of these measures at the low end of the continuum—having reporting requirements is another requirement that we currently have.... For some corporate boards you have a requirement to report what your efforts are to get a more diverse board or what your board looks like. Reporting requirements and outreach are not as effective as quotas. The process often stagnates as we work through different kinds of more moderate measures to try to diversify boards, until we reach the point of imposing some kind of quota.
Norway, for example, has seen the presence of women on the kinds of boards it regulates go from about 23% to 40%. To have a quota system can be very significant for affecting a problem that seems resistant to other sorts of milder measures. I think this is because we face real barriers to diversification in these key leadership decision-making spots, notions of unconscious bias. The stereotypes of structure, the characteristics of leadership that we don't associate with women and do associate with men are clearly important. There's lots of literature about the play that unconscious bias gives and how difficult it is to actually undo it.
Having a quota or some sort of set target for increasing the presence of currently under-represented groups on these important sites of decision-making is one way you can change what our stereotypical assumptions are with respect to women in leadership and decision-making roles.