Bill to promote equal representation for women on company boards and professional equality: our professors have their word to say

Monique Valcour and Valérie Petit were heard by France’s Senate Law Commission on 15 June during the vote on the bill to promote equal representation for women on company boards and professional equality.
They pointed out that most management and corporate governance research into the composition of boards of directors and management committees underlines the benefits of increased female representation, whether in terms of professional equality, business performance or good governance (transparency, control of management teams, board meeting attendance rates, etc.). 
According to Valérie Petit, Associate Dean of the EDHEC Leadership & Corporate Governance Research Centre, the scientific literature shows that the law is justified purely in terms of better business management, a factor that is not necessarily emphasised enough by the legislator. Several items of research, notably those undertaken by Kanter (1977), have also underlined the importance of significant – and not token – female representation. This work justifies the figure of 40% female representation proposed by the bill: it is already known that the first one or two female board members are primarily seen as women and only secondarily as board members. It takes three or four female board members before gender ceases to distort communication and perceptions. Another important point concerns the stock of available women. More specifically, this will probably require consideration of two issues. The first concerns the possibility of accumulating more than one mandate: in the short term, the application of the law will probably increase the number of mandates held per female board member (as is the case in Norway), whereas the trend in France is rather to try and restrict the number of mandates accumulated by the same person. The other issue is that the profile of women represented on boards should ideally cover all board-member profiles, with women with business management origins particularly well represented. This can be used as a lever to encourage businesses to promote women to senior management positions internally, rather than just recruiting a few emblematic figures externally.
In addition, Monique Valcour, Professor of Management within the EDHEC Leadership & Corporate Governance Research Centre, underlined that by obliging boards to comply with a minimum quota of women and hence to regularly renew senior management, the bill will enable women to develop their careers within the same company by obtaining posts that have hitherto been reserved for men.
Their conclusion is that the law is fully justified for business management reasons alone, without even considering male/female equality.
Find the full (French) text of the bill here: http://www.senat.fr/leg/ppl09-223.html