Women in Norway were not helped by a requirement for 40 percent female board membership

See Stop Counting Women: Quotas and tallies won't bring real progress on gender parity by Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor in chief of Reason magazine. Excerpt:

"In Norway, where a requirement for 40 percent female board membership became law in 2008, there’s some evidence that strict quotas may be counterproductive. Fewer companies chose to undertake initial public offerings in the period after the policy took effect and there was no measurable change in the affected companies’ performance or improvement in the prospects for women lower on the corporate hierarchy."