I'm not surprised. As a former resident of Norway, I can tell you the Norwegians are light years ahead in their social policies toward women and children. New mothers get a full year of PAID leave after their child is born, and they can share part of this leave time with the child's father. Add to this other benefits such as universal health care, generous paid vacation, family-supporting wages for virtually everyone in every profession, plus shorter work weeks and you begin to see what true family values look like when put into practice.

I misread the subject line as "Bedroom" instead of "Boardroom;" now I have to find someway to cancel that one-way ticket to Oslo.

yes and if only all countries has the massive oil reserves-relative to population size that norway does, by which the govt of norway makes gargantuan profits, perhaps all countries could possibly to afford to do things like this. Hey maybe drilling in alaska is not such a bad idea after all.

Norbizness-

LOL

It's true the Norwegian government has oil money with which to finance their social programs. It's also true that the Norwegians themselves choose to spend that money in a way that reflects their societal values. The U.S., in contrast, gives lots of lip service to the importance of "family values" without investing the necessary resources to provide families with the help they need. Take a look at what we're spending in Iraq - every day - and tell me why we can't afford to provide our citizens with basic health care.

Sweden have pretty much the same social programmes as Norway and we don´t have any of that sweet,sweet oil money.

I am a feminist, but I do not think it is a good idea to *require* that 40 percent of the board members be women, especially with regard to private companies. This will surely lead to incompetent women getting jobs they either don't want or are not qualified for. When that happens, it only strengthens the false belief that all women are incompetent.

And you know who that really hurts? The women who are actually competent, who work their asses off, and who just want a fair shot. I agree that discrimination still exists and it is a problem, but affirmative action isn't going to change the way people think. Gender-based affirmative action just feeds bigotry. We need to allow women to make their make their own advances, without Big Daddy Government doing it for them.

I love feminism and am very grateful to feminism. It has given me opportunities beyond what I ever thought possible (growing up in an abusive anti-woman household). But I'm sorry, I just can't get behind this particular policy.

I'm with ya drumgurl!

drumgurl, competence does not matter. What matters is that men ard women are in the correct ratios so we can all feel good. If you do not understand that you are hardly a real feminist so stop pretending and go join the republican party.

drumgurl, countryKyle and JJSuperstar - actually, affirmative action policies DO change the way people feel. There is an entire body of research that shows these policies do change gender and race bias.

felix_returns - thanks for proving my point. Your display of "ugly American" values is priceless.

"While it's easy to criticize Iraq, SOMEBODY needs to bear this cost."

Why did we need to incur it in the first place?

threadingwater...I'm sure that there is a "body of research that illustrates that affirmative action changes the "way people feel" and similarly "gender and race bias"; however is this a positive or negative change? and what "body of research" are you reffering to? Is this one of those "A Peoples History of the United States" moments where we fail to provide a single source reference?

Too funny, Jesus Jones. But... not gonna happen.

There are too many Republicans speaking out against how evil working women are right now. If they expanded their ideology a bit (and cut out the big-government crap), I might consider it.

The average living space for poor American households is 1,200 square feet. In Europe, the average space for all households, not just the poor, is 1,000 square feet.
This sounded a little odd to me, so I’m going to be nit-picky.
A quick Googling suggests that the EU has 3691214 square km, and a population of 457,030,418, so that’s about 124 people per sq km, while the total area of the US is “over 9.6
million sq km.” With a population of 295,734,134, that’s
about 30 people per sq km. Taking that into account, the 1,000 sq ft household in Europe is probably more land-rich than the people in the 1,200 sq ft place in the US.

Felix, my friend, I believe you are suffering from a severe case of victim ideology. Or perhaps paranoia. Do you feel you are persecuted for your beliefs?

The number of domestic telegrams to and from Olympic facilities totalled 32,000, some 5,000 of these being outgoing and 27,000 incoming. Almost one half of this total were concentrated at the Olympic Village. Telegrams addressed to athletes and officials were delivered to Olympic Villages as were congratulatory telegrams and those received after the close of the Games, even when they were addressed to Games sites, and in this way the message was delivered to the addressee without undue delay.

Overseas communications were used mostly by foreign news agencies and other news media. The Japan Overseas Radio and Cable System (KDD) set up 26 temporary overseas telegraph and telephone service stations to handle the additional Olympic volume.

These were in addition to the existing Tokyo, Nihonbashi, Shinbashi, Kyobashi and Yokohama overseas telegraph and telephone central stations. A Table shows the number of overseas cables and telephone calls handled during the Tokyo Games.

This greatly exceeds the normal overseas communications volume by the following percentage: cables, 8%; telephone calls, 4%; telex, 8%; telegraphic broadcasts, 39%; telegraphic photo service, 360%; radiophotos, 250%.

On the basis of the experience gained during the Tokyo International Sports Week in 1963, it was expected that telephone exchanges would be flooded with enquiries from the general public during the Olympic Games to such an extent as to impede the official communications required for the Games. In fact, as the Games approached, the office of the Olympic Organizing Committee received an ever increasing number of requests for information over the telephone, and this to some extent, did begin to interrupt the office routine. To deal with this situation an information centre designed to provide information over the telephone was established in the former Akasaka Palace, to alleviate the necessity of Olympic officials having to handle calls of this nature.

The information centre initially operated with 10 circuits, but this was later expanded to 15 to cope with an even greater number of calls for information than had been expected. The centre handled approximately 100,000 telephone calls during the one month period from September 25 to October 24. Telephone facilities at Games sites were therefore fully utilized during the Olympic Games without being interrupted by calls for information.