I've been asked this as well several times.
It was considered a huge move that Canada recently.... We have comply or explain now, which is the lowest bar. There's comply or explain, then there are targets, and then there are quotas. Unfortunately, quotas are burdened with all of these things. There's a historical legacy of quotas, and again, it's not me who has any issues with it.
I think countries that have adopted quotas in politics have done really well. I'm talking about Norway, Germany, or France, for example. They have fulfilled the number of women on boards. They've actually done far better than countries that just have targets, and they've definitely done far better than countries that have comply or explain requirements, like Canada, the U.K. and Australia.
My fear with quotas is that, again, we end up hurting the people we are trying to help. We're trying to diversify these institutions, and quotas actually do that very effectively because these are legal quotas. If you don't fulfill legal quotas, you are in violation of the law, which makes a big difference. The problem is that quotas have to be maintained for a significant period to be effective, because groups of people who have not previously been given a seat at the table often need time to learn once they do get that seat at the table. There is that assumption, for example.
The example that people keep using is Rwanda, because today it has the biggest number of women in parliament. I think 64% are women. Remember that Rwanda actually adopted legal quotas, but the quotas were only for 30%, if I remember correctly. If the accusations that people make were true—that if you put women into these positions, they're not that effective and they're often just little shoo-ins for men and will do what the majority group does—we would never have gotten to 64%. They would have stayed at just 30%.
I think that in Rwanda, even if they remove the quotas, we're never going to see the number of women go back to 9% or 10% because there's been enough time to have a demonstration effect, so that women can say, “Yes, we can do this. This is the norm; this is nothing unusual.” I think that's the big difference.