Corporate Governance and Diversity: Gender Quotas in The Boardroom and The Role of Law From A Comparative Law Perspective

In recent years, board diversity has become a relevant topic in the corporate governance debate. Diversity can take numerous forms but most of the attention has been focused on gender diversity. Observing the evolution of the multilevel soft law and hard law sources system from a comparative law perspective, is possible to identify a general convergence among policies adopted in different legal systems to increase female representation in roles traditionally held by men. In particular, a convergence in the shift from the predominance of voluntary targets and soft law initiatives to the surge of mandatory gender quotas on board has taken place in the last decades. Even though there are still a limited number of countries that make use of hard quotas, the trend is growing, and this productive symbiosis between the public and private spheres could be extended to protect other facets of diversity.