44 PERSPECTIVES ON BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS | VOL 41 | 2023 could help this disparity. However, the impacts of the new policy must be monitored carefully with an eye toward making further amendments should the gender gap continue to persist. Attention to these two areas of concern, culture and policy, may help alleviate the limitations to the number of women in management positions. Recommendations A solution that may have an impact on both laws and culture is increasing public awareness of the lack of women in management positions. Currently, the Danish perception of their country’s gender equality and its reality is mismatched. One of the core values that some Danes attribute to their country is gender equality (Christensen & Muhr, 2018), but because the low number of women in corporate leadership positions is not recognized, save for women holding these jobs, there is no public movement to incite change. Because Danes do hold equality in such high regard, it could be that, once they are made aware of the situation, public efforts would cause cultural and policy changes. Danes believe that the gender gap is better than it is, which is why the statistics of the number of women at each level of leadership should be reported so that the problem is fully understood. There are several ways to make the public aware of the gender gap, such as using media sources, teaching children in schools, and including workshops in the workplace. Utilizing public media outreach can be tricky, especially when reports go against closely held public values. For example, in 2014, a report exposed Denmark’s high rates of sexual assault. In response, Danish news outlets vehemently fought these allegations, which may have propagated a false sense of gender equality and security (Leine et al., 2019). Because sexual assault is often less visible to the public, its extent was perhaps easier to deny. Given that the gender gap can be more easily verified by ordinary citizens, it would be less deniable by the media. Nonetheless, the reaction to the sexual assault report shows that identifying the reality of the gender gap within Danish businesses would need to be revealed to the public carefully and considerately. If a report calling out corporate board numbers seemed overly critical of Denmark, it would be natural for defensiveness to emerge. Once social discomfort is realized, though, the public may push for change, which would certainly involve a discussion of a quota system. However, quota systems have been met with backlash, as many may see women as quota-fillers. The EU created guidelines for gender quotas to reach 40% of women on company boards. Many other Nordic countries agreed to this, but Denmark did not. Instead, in 2013, 1100 of Denmark’s top companies were legislated to create their own guidelines for better implementing higher numbers of women. Since then, Denmark has increasingly lagged behind other Nordic countries, clearly indicating the inadequacy of this approach (Smith & Parrotta, 2015). In February of 2022, the Danish government decided to support the EU quota and may be taking steps in the future to ensure that the goal of 40% of women on boards is reached. A bill may soon propose new equality criteria (Danish Government Changes Stance…, 2022). One benefit of the quota system is that Danish girls would be able to see more women in corporate roles, potentially inspiring them to pursue management positions in the future. Because executives are picked from candidates who already hold high positions, there should also be quotas at lower levels, such as managers. Any bill that proposes adding a quota to the highest positions should also place quotas in lower-level positions. Legislation such as this may help to ebb the leaky pipeline flow. Aside from legislating quotas, the new parental leave laws, stating that the number of parental leave weeks must be more equal between men and women, may increase the latter’s numbers in positions of higher management. The hope underlying the recent EU-based directive is that the amount of time women take off from work will be matched by men, evening out the time spent at home out of the formal workplace, thereby giving women an even chance at professional advancement. With this directive still in its early stages, the numbers of men and women taking parental leave have not yet begun to change significantly. Hopefully in the next few years, the amount of time that men and women take off from work may begin to converge, but the situation must be monitored closely. Although each parent is entitled to 24 weeks off, some of these weeks can be transferred to the other parent, with the result that women may still take more time off than men (Eftevaag, 2022). If that cultural pattern continues to prevail, Denmark may wish to go beyond EU guidelines and mandate each parent take equal time off. Conclusion To improve the representation of women in Danish leadership roles, a multifaceted approach should be taken. Changes to the beliefs about women in business and to pertinent laws are both necessary to equalize the number of women in management positions. Cultural change is generally achieved only
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