" Days after the 1 January 2008 deadline passed, almost every single listed firm has female faces on its board. The government can now proclaim its policies a success"

That's just incredibly sick (the calling it a success part). The definition of success is that people follow the laws? In what other profession might it be so easy to be successful?

So now when you hear about female Norwegian executives, you can assume with a fifty percent chance that they are only hired to comply with the law, and are thus to incompetent for their job.

It's like stock photos of board meetings propagated back into the real world...

Will be interesting to look at Norway vs Sweden, Finland, Denmark and other European firms in five years or so, and see if there is any impact.