职场高层缺乏女性参与

有人认为，到目前为止在人类的发展史上，是欧洲人引领了世界。有时，即便是美国人也要向他们看齐。不久前，法国总统萨科奇的行为就是个不错的例子--他试图立法强制让公司董事会这个世上最男性化的领域变得性别平等。
Many say the Europeans lead the world by far in human development, and that even the Americans can't keep up with them sometimes. French President Sarkozy has provided the latest example of this by trying to pass a law forcing gender equality in one of the most masculine areas still around in today's world: the corporate boardroom.

据英国《卫报》报道，萨科奇的中右翼政党建议立法，确保到2015年女性在法国高层董事会上“撑起半边天”。该法案要求，在未来18个月内，巴黎证交所名单上的所有公司董事会成员中女性比例达到20%，4年内将该比例提升至40%。截止2015年，所有上述公司的董事会中，女性成员占据一半。
Britain's the Guardian newspaper has reported that Sarkozy's center-right party has proposed legislation that would see women "hold up half the sky" in France's top corporate boardrooms by 2015. The bill requires all companies listed on the Paris stock exchange to gradually implement changes that put women in 20 percent of their board seats within 18 months, and 40 percent within four years. By 2015, half of the board members in all these companies must be women.

法国的这一举措让世界为之震惊的同时，人们也想知道它是否能够成功。这里还有一点十分重要，尽管女性在社会各领域都有很大的进步，多数顶级公司仍然由男性主导。
The world may have been gasping over the audacity of the French bill and wondering whether it could succeed. Still, it's important to note that, despite the progress women have made in all levels of society, top businesses are mostly male-dominated.

在英国，英国金融时报100指数的公司中，女性成员仅占董事会成员总数的12%。另据《卫报》报道，1/4的公司董事会完全由男性组成。在美国的大公司中，女性所占比例仅有些微提升--《财富》500强公司董事会中，女性成员占15%。
In the UK, 12 percent of all board members in the top FTSE (Financial Times Stock Exchange) 100 companies are female. One in four boardrooms are exclusively male, wrote the Guardian. In the US, women are faring only slightly better at the largest companies - they hold 15 percent of board seats at Fortune 500 firms.

相比而言，北欧国家的高级女商人状况要相对明朗。瑞典和芬兰公司中，女领导比例分别占22%和17%。2003年，挪威成为首个立法提升公司董事局女性成员比例的国家。挪威政府要求，企业将董事局中的女性比例提升至40%，否则将面临查封惩罚。尽管此举引发了多人抗议，但却成效显著。据《卫报》报道，目前，挪威公司董事会成员的女性比例(44%)高于世界各国。而2001年，该比例仅为6%。
By comparison, Nordic countries boast better conditions for senior businesswomen. The female director ratio in Swedish and Finnish companies is 22 and 17 percent, respectively. And Norway took the prize for the first country to boost the number of women on company boards by law, in 2003. The Norwegian government demanded that businesses increase the number of women on their boards to 40 percent, or they could suffer the punishment of being closed down. Although many protested against the move, the regulation worked. The Guardian says that Norway now has the highest proportion of women on boards anywhere in the world, at 44 percent-that's up from 6 percent in 2001.