Gender Quotas for Corporate Boards : Depoliticizing Gender and the Economy

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=swom20 NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research ISSN: 0803-8740 (Print) 1502-394X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/swom20 Gender Quotas for Corporate Boards: Depoliticizing Gender and the Economy Anna Elomäki To cite this article: Anna Elomäki (2018) Gender Quotas for Corporate Boards: Depoliticizing Gender and the Economy, NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 26:1, 53-68, DOI: 10.1080/08038740.2017.1388282 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2017.1388282 © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 30 Nov 2017. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 554 View Crossmark data NORA—NORdic JOuRNAl Of femiNist ANd GeNdeR ReseARch, 2018 VOl. 26, NO. 1, 53–68 https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2017.1388282 Gender Quotas for Corporate Boards: Depoliticizing Gender and the Economy AnnaElomäki department of Philosophy, history, culture and Art studies, university of helsinki, helsinki, finland ABSTRACT Gender quotas for corporate boards can be seen as a way of drawing attention to gendered power within the economy as well as a way to democratize the economy, yet the debate about them has focused on the economic and business benefits of gender equality rather than on gender justice or democracy. This article examines how women’s under-representation in economic decision-making was constituted as an economic problem in the European Union’s gender-equality policies and how the economization of the debate on gender quotas for corporate boards affects understandings of gender equality and the economy. The article contributes to research on gender and neoliberalism through developing an approach for analysing the depoliticizing effects of economized gender-equality discourses. It argues that the depoliticized understandings of gender and the economy put forward in the debate water down the politicizing potential of the proposed EU gender-balance directive and that the debate about gender quotas has enhanced the neoliberalization and corporatization of EU gender-equality discourse. Introduction In many European countries, as well as at the European-Union (EU) level, gender-equality policy in the area of decision-making has recently expanded from politics to the economic realm, and specifically to corporate boards. The boardroom gender quota adopted in Norway in 2003 has inspired laws or non-sanctioned recommendations in several EU member states, and in November 2012 the European Commission (EC) proposed EU-level legislation on the topic. Calls for gender balance in economic decision-making can be seen as a way to challenge gendered power relations within the economy as well as to politicize the issue through placing it on the public agenda. They have also been seen as a way to increase democratic control over finance and the economy (Walby, 2015). In many cases, however, the policy debate has focused on the economic and business benefits of gender balance rather than on gendered power and democracy (Senden, 2014). The EU-level debate has particularly strongly framed gender balance in economic terms, in contrast, for instance, to the Norwegian debate in which arguments about democracy played a crucial role. In this KEYWORDS Neoliberalism; genderequality policy; european union; gender quota; depoliticization ARTICLE HISTORY Received 14 march 2017 Accepted2 October 2017 CONTACT Anna elomäki [email protected] © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. 54 A. ELOMÄKI article, I examine how women’s under-representation in economic decision-making was constituted as a policy problem at the EU level, and I consider the actors and knowledge that have shaped the debate. I ask: how have understandings of gender equality and the economy shifted in this process? And: what has the economization of the debate meant for its potential to address gendered power relations in the economic sphere and politicize the economy? The article sets the policy debates on women in economic decision-making and boardroom quotas in the context of the neoliberalization of feminism (Fraser, 2013; Kantola & Squires, 2012; Pruegl, 2014) and the increasing corporate influence on public gender-equality discourses and policies (Bexell, 2012; Pruegl & True, 2014; Roberts, 2014). More broadly, it connects the calls for gender balance to literature on the shifting relationship between politics and the economy under neoliberal governance (e.g. Brown, 2015). All these scholarly debates have drawn attention to the depoliticizing effects of neoliberalization. This article contributes to these debates through developing an analytical approach to addressing the depoliticizing effects of economized gender-equality discourses. My research material consists of the policy documents of different EU institutions and interest groups, which I read through a discursive approach that focuses on problem representations and the discursive construction of gender equality and the economy (e.g. Bacchi, 1999; Lombardo, Meier, & Verloo, 2009). I argue that the economization of the gender-balance debate through arguments about economic growth, competitiveness, and business benefits has twofold depoliticizing effects. In addition to depoliticizing gender equality through promoting individualized understandings of it and sidelining gendered power relations, the debate depoliticizes the economy through legitimizing dominant economic goals and corporate capitalism and sidelining economic power and the effects of economic decisions. I further argue that, although the economization of the gender-balance debate can be seen as part of a broader development in EU gender-equality policy, as well as a strategic choice to place women’s under-representation on the political agenda, the influence of corporate actors has also had an important role to play. To develop these arguments, I will begin with my theoretical framework and develop an approach for analysing the depoliticizing effects of economized gender-equality discourses. I will then turn to the EU-level discussions on women in economic decision-making and the proposed gender-balance directive. First, I examine how the constitution of gender balance as an economic rather than a political problem has changed the way in which gender equality and gendered subjects are understood in policy documents. I then scrutinize how the economy and economic decisions are portrayed in the debate. In the last part, I link these discursive transformations to the actors and knowledge that shape the official EU discourse. The depoliticizing effects of economized gender-equality discourses The key feature of neoliberalism, understood as a political rationality or a form of governance, is the extension of market values and practices to all spheres of life (Brown, 2015; Oksala, 2013). Over the past few decades, economic rationality has extended to public gender-equality discourses and policies as well. On the one hand, gender equality is increasingly represented as beneficial for business profitability, economic growth, and competitiveness. On the other hand, neoliberal governance practices, such as cost-benefit calculations and best practices, have begun to shape the way in which gender-equality policy is made (see e.g. NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 55 Elias, 2013; Elomäki, 2015; Kantola & Squires, 2012; Roberts, 2014). In this article, I refer to these processes, which are visible in EU gender-equality policy and in the debate about women on boards, with the term economization (Brown, 2015; Caliscan & Callon, 2009). Economization has been shown to change the goals, practices, and subjects of gender-equality policy. Gender issues that are compatible with economic priorities or are easy to monetize have been prioritized, and legislation and redistributive measures as means to promote gender equality have been partially replaced by changing attitudes, capacity building, incentives, and technical governance tools (e.g. Kantola & Squires, 2012). In addition, as scholars working from a Foucauldian governmentality perspective have pointed out, economized discourses and interventions constitute women as rational and calculating economic subjects competing for economic rewards, or as entrepreneurial subjects responsible for their own success (Bexell, 2012; Elias, 2013; Rankin, 2001). Feminist scholars have more or less explicitly argued that economization depoliticizes gender-equality discourses and policies in ways that blunt their critical edge. However, the theme of depoliticization has not yet been analytically developed. In the following, I bridge this gap with an understanding of the depoliticizing effects of discourses that focus on the economic benefits of gender equality. I argue that these effects should be conceptualized as twofold. On the one hand, economized gender-equality discourses bring forward apolitical and individualized understandings of gender equality and inequality. On the other hand, they fail to take a critical approach to the economy or the role of gender therein. In order to understand what is at stake, when policy debates frame gender balance in economic decision-making as beneficial for businesses and the economy, it is necessary to address the depoliticization of gender as well as of the economy. With regard to the depoliticization of gender, scholars have argued that discourses constructing gender equality as a contribution to economic growth or business benefits are mainly silent about the structural and historical dimensions of inequality (e.g. Wilson, 2015). Problem representations and solutions tend to focus on individuals rather than on changing gendered structures, and they make women responsible for their own advancement (Elias, 2013). The emphasis on consensus and win-win situations sidelines gendered power and leaves no room for articulating the relationship between women and men in terms of conflictual social relations (Rönnblom, 2009). Furthermore, economized discourses fail to view women’s political struggle as a collective struggle and do not acknowledge the links between feminism and other struggles for social justice (Elias, 2013, p. 165). As regards the depoliticization of the economy, framing gender equality as a contribution to economic growth and competitiveness has been argued to legitimize and strengthen neoliberal rationality and values (e.g. Oksala, 2013). Furthermore, economized gender-equality discourses that are rarely critical of existing economic policies legitimize growth and competitiveness policies and corporate practices, which have been shown to uphold or create new gender inequalities at global, national, and local levels, as well as within households (e.g. Bexell, 2012; Elomäki, 2015; Roberts, 2014). Finally, arguments about the economic benefits of gender equality are based on a narrow and highly gendered understanding of the economy. Like the mainstream economic theories on which these arguments draw, such arguments maintain the invisibility of unpaid work and other gendered assumptions typical of neoclassical economic theory and economic policy-making (Elson, 2009). In recent theoretical discussions on and around the concept of depoliticization, Wood and Flinders (2014) have identified three different forms: governmental, social, and discursive. 56 A. ELOMÄKI In their typology, discursive depoliticization refers to the concealing, negating, or removing of contingency through specific language and framings, such as rationalist and technocratic discourses (Wood & Flinders, 2014, pp. 156–164). The processes of depoliticization connected to economized gender-equality discourses are clearly discursive. However, rather than denying contingency and choice, these discourses depoliticize gender and the economy and the relationship between the two through concealing and negating power and its effects. Literature on the shifting relationship between politics and the economy under neoliberal governance provides additional tools for understanding how the economy may be depoliticized as well as repoliticized in the debate about women on boards. The first idea worth taking into account is that issues identified as economic have been commonly removed from the realm of democratic decision-making and deliberation and relegated to economic experts and institutions (Mitchell, 1998; Oksala, 2013). The debate on boardroom quotas seems to challenge this development to some extent. After all, to require legislative gender quotas for corporate boards is to suggest that democratic institutions should be able to set conditions for corporate decision-making processes. The second useful idea is Wendy Brown’s (2015) argument that the extension of market priorities, values, and practices characteristic of neoliberal rationality is reshaping the sphere of politics in a manner that eradicates its distinctively democratic and political character. Brown is particularly concerned about the effects on political subjectivity and democratic citizenship: she argues that seeing human beings always and everywhere as economic actors and as human capital eradicates the idea of humans as political and democratic subjects who shape and control their lives together (Brown, 2015, pp. 33–45, 87–99). Brown’s views on the financialized and depoliticized subject of neoliberalism complement the feminist critique of the entrepreneurial and individualized female subjects of economized gender-equality discourses. In light of my conceptualization of the twofold depoliticizing effects of economized gender-equality discourses, and taking into account the shifting relationship between the economy and politics, my research question takes the following form: What does the economization of the EU-level gender-balance debate mean for the potential of the proposed gender-balance directive to challenge gendered power relations within the economy and politicize the economy? This question acknowledges that processes of depoliticization intertwine with processes of (re)politicization (Wood & Flinders, 2014, p. 165) and that the processes of neoliberalization are never complete. Research material and methodology My research material consists of documents from the European Commission (n=29), the Council of the European Union (n=4), and the European Parliament (n=12) dating from 1988, when the European Parliament brought women’s representation in decision-making to the EU’s gender-equality agenda, up until the European Commission’s draft directive on gender balance on corporate boards (2012) and the European Parliament’s reading on the proposal (European Parliament [EP], 2013). In addition to official policy documents, such as European Commission communications, Council resolutions, and European Parliament reports, I analyse background reports that form part of the constitution of male-dominated boards as a problem worthy of EU action. The analysed documents include general gender-equality policy documents that mention decision-making, as well as documents focused on decision-making or economic decision-making. Most of the analysed documents NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 57 were issued by the European Commission, which took the lead in putting economic decision-making on the EU’s gender-equality agenda. The Council, which represents the member states, has been the least vocal institution on this issue. Indeed, the gender-balance directive is at the moment of writing stuck in the Council, because some member states refuse to endorse it. In order to determine whose voices and knowledge underpin the official representations of the issue, I have examined the documents of interest groups, such as women’s organizations (European Women’s Lobby, Business and Professional Women), employers’ organizations (e.g. BUSINESSEUROPE, UEAPME), trade unions (ETUC), and large companies (e.g. Ernst & Young, McKinsey & Company) (n=13). These documents consist of selected position papers from the early 2000s onwards as well as replies to the European Commission’s 2012 consultation on measures to improve gender balance. My method is a broad discursive and conceptual approach, which combines analysing problem representations (Bacchi, 1999) with analysing the discursive construction of gender equality (Lombardo et al., 2009). I focus on the discursive practices that advance certain representations of the issue, which in turn limit our understanding of the issue and of gender equality and the economy, constitute certain subjectivities, and have material effects. Economized and depoliticized gender equality The European Commission’s proposal for an EU directive on gender balance on corporate boards (European Commission [EC], 2012a) sets a target of 40% of the under-represented sex on non-executive boards of large, publicly listed companies. Even though the content of the proposal was weak—it does not oblige member states to introduce quota laws—its legislative form was exceptional among the soft measures for which EU gender-equality policy has been criticized (Lombardo & Meier, 2008, p. 104). What is striking in the policy debate that paved the way to the draft directive is how EU institutions, in particular the European Commission, conceptually separated economic decision-making from political decision-making and turned women’s under-representation in the former into an economic problem. In this section, I outline this process and analyse how the framing of gender balance as a question of competitiveness and business benefits has changed the understandings of gendered subjects and gender equality. Gender equality in decision-making has been a priority area for the European Union’s gender-equality policy since the early 1990s. Initially, the focus was on political decision-making, but gender-equality policy documents regularly mentioned economic decision-making as well (Commission of the European Communities [CEC], 1990; Council of Ministers [COMs], 1996; EP, 2000). First, women’s under-representation in both politics and the economy was represented unequivocally as a gender inequality that had to be corrected in the name of justice. Women’s participation in decision-making was typically seen as a condition for achieving gender equality: a way to change attitudes and integrate women’s needs and interests (CEC, 1990; COMs, 1996; EP, 2000). The constitution of women’s under-representation in economic decision-making as a separate policy problem with an economic rationale began at the beginning of the first decade of the 2000s. Taking stock of progress made to promote women in economic decision-making, the Commission suggested that “[p]articular attention needs to be given to the private sector for which a policy approach has to be designed which shows employers that 58 A. ELOMÄKI gender equality is a productive factor in business” (CEC, 2000, p. 21). In its gender-equality strategy adopted in 2006, the Commission discussed economic decision-making exclusively in terms of arguments about business benefits: “A balanced participation of women and men in economic decision-making can contribute to a more productive and innovative work environment and culture and better economic performance” (CEC, 2006, p. 6). There are two noteworthy things in this short paragraph. The first is the narrow definition of economic decision-making as involving the corporate sector, rather than as any decision-making concerning the economy. This understanding anticipates the Commission’s later focus on corporate boards. The second is the instrumental approach: the main rationale is no longer the advancement of gender equality, but the benefits of gender balance. In 2010, following the increased attention paid to women’s low representation in finance and business leadership in the aftermath of the economic crisis (Pruegl, 2012; Roberts, 2014), the Commission announced that it would take action to tackle women’s under-representation in economic decision-making (EC, 2010a, p. 7). It soon turned out that the target was one specific area of economic decision-making, namely corporate boards. In March 2011, Commissioner Viviane Reding, who was in charge of gender-equality issues, unveiled Women on the Board Pledge for Europe (EC, 2011a), a voluntary commitment for companies to increase women’s presence on their boards. Meanwhile, the European Parliament recommended that the Commission and the member states follow the Norwegian example and adopt quotas for corporate boards (EP, 2010; EP, 2011). In early 2012, the Commission announced that it would explore options for EU-level measures, including legislation (EC, 2012b, p. 15). During these years, the Commission consistently constituted women’s under-representation as an economic problem. The Commission’s background reports on economic decision-making and business leadership (EC, 2010b, 2011b, 2012b) supplemented the earlier business-oriented rationale with macroeconomic reasoning. Women’s under-representation was turned into a problem for the economic growth and competitiveness of the European economy. The explanatory memorandum of the draft directive sums up this new approach: The under-utilisation of the skills of highly qualified women’s constitutes a loss of economic growth potential. Fully mobilising all available human resources will be a key element to addressing the EU’s demographic challenges, competing successfully in a globalised economy and ensuring a comparative advantage vis-à-vis third countries. Moreover, gender imbalance in the boards of publicly listed companies in the EU can be a missed opportunity at company level in terms of both corporate governance and financial company performance. (EC, 2012a, p. 3) The economization of the gender-balance debate can be seen as the culmination of a broader development at the EU level, in which arguments based on rights and justice have been replaced by a focus on the economic benefits of gender equality. The instrumentalization of gender equality for the achievement of economic priorities has always been characteristic of the EU’s gender-equality policy (e.g. Kantola, 2010; Stratigaki, 2004), but over the past few years the Commission has explicitly developed and promoted the “economic case for gender equality”, a discourse that draws attention to the macroeconomic benefits of gender equality (Elomäki, 2015). The policy debate around women on boards is by far the most thoroughly economized discussion about gender equality at the EU level: some policy documents on gender balance do not even mention gender equality (EC, 2012b). The extent of the economic framing of this particular issue is not surprising: promoting more women leaders easily fits into the scope of increasing the pool of talent and the efficiency of labour markets (True, 2016, p. 44). NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 59 Rather than invoking the argument about gender equality as an aspect of economic growth that has played a key role in EU gender-equality discourses, the debate about women on boards connects gender equality to competitiveness. Competition has been seen as one of the key values of neoliberal rationality (Brown, 2015; Foucault, 2008), and competitiveness as a policy goal is closely connected to neoliberal privatizing, welfare-state-dismantling policies and governance reforms (Fougner, 2006). In order to demonstrate the value of gender balance to competitiveness, EU institutions rely on the neoliberal understanding of human beings as human capital (Brown, 2015; Foucault, 2008; Repo, 2015). The basis of these arguments is the discrepancy between women’s higher level of education and their lower representation in top positions: While women have a higher level of tertiary educational attainment than men in the EU, their professional careers do not fully reflect their skill levels, which is a waste of human resources and competences at a time when human capital is the key to competitiveness in the global economy. (EC, 2011b, p. 55) Women are not characterized as an under-represented group or as prospective decision-makers, but as unused human capital that should be “efficiently utilized” and “channelled to best effect” (EP, 2011, p. 136) or even “exploited” (EC, 2012a, p. 16). The debate thus illustrates Brown’s (2015, pp. 33–45, 87–99) point that the expansion of neoliberal rationality has turned human beings into human capital for states and companies, valued only as long as they are useful to economic growth, competitiveness, good credit ratings, and corporate profitability. A key argument related to the human-capital perspective is that “investments” made in women’s education are currently not paying off: “Women’s untapped talent […] represents wasted investment in human capital” (EC, 2011b, p. 51). In addition to implying that educating women without benefiting from their talents is a waste of money for governments, policy documents suggest that women themselves are not receiving a proper pay-off for their education. Invoking the common-market metric of return-on-investment, the draft directive argues that “[m]aking full use of the existing female talent pool would constitute a marked improvement in terms of return on education for both individuals and the public sector” (EC, 2012a, p. 16). Under this economized logic, women are constituted as human capital not only in relation to the state but also in relation to themselves, and education becomes an investment they make in order to accrue returns. As Brown (2015, pp. 33–45) has pointed out, the neoliberal subject must constantly invest in its human capital in order to enhance its competitive position in the market and increase its value. The economization of the policy debate through arguments about business profitability and competitiveness has taken place side by side with a change in the way in which gender equality is understood. During the 1990s, EU institutions saw women’s under-representation in all areas of decision-making as a question of representation, participation, and the sharing of power between women and men (e.g. COMs, 1996, p. 12). In other words, the problem with under-representation was that women were excluded from the making of decisions that mattered to them and to society. When economic decision-making became constituted as a distinct, economized policy problem, women’s under-representation was turned into a labour-market issue. More specifically, the problem was represented as “the lack of equality in career advancement” (EC, 2011b, p. 52): EU institutions should strive to “afford women the same career development prospects as men” (EP, 2011, p. 136). 60 A. ELOMÄKI From a pragmatic perspective, reframing women’s under-representation on company boards as a labour-market issue was necessary in order for the Commission to propose legislation. The EU does not have a mandate to legislate on matters related to gender equality in decision-making, but it can propose legislation on gender equality in matters of employment. Although in this sense necessary, the new problem representation is embedded in the same neoliberal logic of competition as the arguments about women’s human capital. The goal of equal opportunities for career advancement can be interpreted as a demand for unhindered competition between individuals. The implicit assumption is that women should be able to pursue promotions on an equal footing with men, without the competition-distorting effects of discrimination. Women should also become more competitive: “Women need to be better equipped to compete with men by becoming more ambitious and ready to promote other women” (EC, 2010b, p. 34). The career frame thus supplements the macroeconomic argument about the role of women’s human capital in global competition with an understanding of gender equality as fair competition between individuals. The economization of the policy debate has depoliticized gender equality in several ways. The idea of gender equality as an end in itself has been replaced by an instrumentalized discourse. The questions about power that were prominent during the 1990s—the sharing of societal power between women and men as well as power relations between women and men—have disappeared from policy documents. In addition, EU institutions’ discourses on and around the issue have become more individualized. Policy documents of the 1990s saw equal participation as benefiting women as a group; women of all social classes would gain from a better representation of women’s interests in decision-making. In contrast, the new focus on career advancement takes the perspective of well-educated and skilled individuals who are seeking returns on their education. These career women do not represent women as a group; they are interested only in their own advancement. Although the EU gender-balance discourse resembles the individualized and depoliticized gender-equality discourses of international economic institutions and multinational corporations, it differs from them on one crucial point. Namely, the responsibilization of women for their own success has become rarer and the role of structural factors in women’s under-representation and the need for structural change is acknowledged. Instead of recommending that women “lean in” to leadership (e.g. True, 2016), the Commission aims to generate structural change through legislation. The depoliticized economy Some scholars have argued that gender balance in economic decision-making has the potential to democratize the economy and ensure that those affected by economic decisions take part in making them (Walby, 2015). In this section, I argue that, although the debate about gender balance may indeed have the potential to politicize the economy, the way in which the economy and its relationship to politics are represented in EU policy documents undermines this potential. At first, EU institutions portrayed women’s under-representation in all spheres, including the economy, as a question of democracy: under-representation was “a barrier for the democratic development” (CEC, 1998, p. 15) and “unacceptable in a democracy” (EP, 2000) and should be corrected in order to “realize full democracy” (CEC, 2004, p. 9). 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