Originally published here.

The expansion of ‘defamilialising’ policies designed to reduce the family’s care loadand conflicts between employment and care has helped bring more women acrossadvanced economies into the workforce. These trends have especially benefitted lower-income women who cannot afford market solutions to work–family conflicts and whotypically find better working and pay conditions in the public sector (e.g. Esping-Andersen, 2009). However, an influential body of work has problematised such policiesfor triggering gendered ‘paradoxes’ or ‘trade-offs’ for high-earning women (Mandel and Semyonov, 2006; Pettit and Hook, 2009).

According to these studies, generouswork–family reconciliation policies and large welfare states strengthen the ‘glass ceil-ing’ that undermines women’s entry into managerial and lucrative positions by disrupt-ing women’s careers, increasing employer discrimination against women and drawingwomen away from higher-paying private-sector positions (e.g. Cooke, 2011; Mandeland Semyonov, 2006; Pettit and Hook, 2005; Shalev, 2008).

Consequently, while Nordiccountries achieve high female labour force participation rates, women are underrepre-sented in managerial positions compared with other countries. Instead, the United Statesand other less generous welfare states have been leaders on this measure, with theConservative, Mediterranean and Post-Socialist regimes sitting in between these two poles (Mandel and Semyonov, 2006).

Missing from this literature, however, is a consideration of the relationship betweendifferent work–family constellations and women’s representation in the very top leader-ship positions at the board level. This article contributes to addressing this ‘gap’. Afuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 22 industrialised countries illuminates thecombination(s) of ‘women-friendly’ state interventions associated with a ‘critical mass’of women in board positions across private-sector companies. ‘Board positions’ encom- pass the chairperson, executive directors (including the Chief Executive Officer), non-executive directors and any employee representatives on the board.

Focusing on women’sshare of these positions is important, not least because these jobs carry intrinsic (e.g. jobsatisfaction) and extrinsic (e.g. high pay and status) benefits; redistributing the gendereddivision of power at the top of the labour market can also have positive trickle-down benefits for other women at lower levels in terms of better employment outcomes (e.g.smaller gender wage gaps) and improved firm-level policies and cultures (e.g. measuresto combat sexual harassment) (Kowalewska, 2020).

The state interventions examined are the main welfare interventions identified in priorstudies – namely, leaves, childcare services and public-sector employment (e.g. Mandeland Semyonov, 2006) – and legislation governing the gender composition of private-sector corporate boards. While certain countries have consciously avoided such legisla-tion (e.g. the United States), several others have adopted a voluntary or ‘soft’ approachthat encourages but does not force companies to address a lack of gender diversity in the boardroom. Unconvinced of the effectiveness of self-regulation, other governments haveresorted to a mandatory-based approach, implementing ‘hard’ gender boardroom quotaswith penalties for noncompliance, often to the dismay of business leaders and representa-tives (Mensi-Klarbach et al., 2019).Overall, the analysis reveals limited evidence in support of a welfare-state paradox.

While certain countries with less favourable leave policies have achieved a critical massof women on boards, so too have many countries with well-designed paid leaves.Similarly, neither low nor high public-sector employment levels are associated with theoutcome. Further, a critical mass of women on boards is less likely in the absence of adequate childcare services. The analysis also reveals that only countries with some formof legislation governing the gender composition of corporate boards have achieved acritical mass of women on boards. Nevertheless, hard gender boardroom quotas are notrequired for this outcome; a softer, business-led approach can also work.

However, the institutional context affects the potential achievements of the soft approach, as it has been most successful under ‘women-friendly’ work–family policy constellations.

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