MANY say the Europeans lead the world by far in human development, and that even the Americans can't keep up with them sometimes. French President Sarkozy has provided the latest example of this by trying to pass a law forcing gender equality in one of the most masculine areas still around in today's world: the corporate boardroom。

　　据英国《卫报》报道，萨科奇的中右翼政党建议立法，确保到2015年女性在法国高层董事会上“撑起半边天”。该法案要求，在未来18个月内，巴黎证交所名单上的所有公司董事会成员中女性比例达到20%，4年内将该比例提升至40%。截止2015年，所有上述公司的董事会中，女性成员占据一半。

　　Britain's the Guardian newspaper has reported that Sarkozy's center-right party has proposed legislation that would see women "hold up half the sky" in France's top corporate boardrooms by 2015. The bill requires all companies listed on the Paris stock exchange to gradually implement changes that put women in 20 percent of their board seats within 18 months, and 40 percent within four years. By 2015, half of the board members in all these companies must be women。

　　法国的这一举措让世界为之震惊的同时，人们也想知道它是否能够成功。这里还有一点十分重要，尽管女性在社会各领域都有很大的进步，多数顶级公司仍然由男性主导。

　　The world may have been gasping over the audacity of the French bill and wondering whether it could succeed. Still, it's important to note that, despite the progress women have made in all levels of society, top businesses are mostly male-dominated。

　　在英国，英国金融时报100指数的公司中，女性成员仅占董事会成员总数的12%。另据《卫报》报道，1/4的公司董事会完全由男性组成。在美国的大公司中，女性所占比例仅有些微提升--《财富》500强公司董事会中，女性成员占15%。

　　In the UK, 12 percent of all board members in the top FTSE (Financial Times Stock Exchange) 100 companies are female. One in four boardrooms are exclusively male, wrote the Guardian. In the US, women are faring only slightly better at the largest companies - they hold 15 percent of board seats at Fortune 500 firms。

　　相比而言，北欧国家的高级女商人状况要相对明朗。瑞典和芬兰公司中，女领导比例分别占22%和17%。2003年，挪威成为首个立法提升公司董事局女性成员比例的国家。挪威政府要求，企业将董事局中的女性比例提升至40%，否则将面临查封惩罚。尽管此举引发了多人抗议，但却成效显著。据《卫报》报道，目前，挪威公司董事会成员的女性比例(44%)高于世界各国。而2001年，该比例仅为6%。

　　By comparison, Nordic countries boast better conditions for senior businesswomen. The female director ratio in Swedish and Finnish companies is 22 and 17 percent, respectively. And Norway took the prize for the first country to boost the number of women on company boards by law, in 2003. The Norwegian government demanded that businesses increase the number of women on their boards to 40 percent, or they could suffer the punishment of being closed down. Although many protested against the move, the regulation worked. The Guardian says that Norway now has the highest proportion of women on boards anywhere in the world, at 44 percent-that's up from 6 percent in 2001.

　　然而，除了被剥夺在大公司坐上自己梦寐以求职位的机会外，全球范围的职场女性们还面临一系列的其他歧视问题。

　　Apart from being denied the opportunity to occupy coveted seats at the biggest companies, businesswomen around the world face a whole range of other discriminative problems。

　　美国社会学家、"Selling Women Short: Gender and Money on Wall Street "一书作者Louise Marie Roth举例说明了华尔街极度的性别不平等现象。她跟踪记录了76位毕业于一流商业学校男女的职业发展。20世纪90年代，他们一起在大型投资公司起步。然而，到1997年，女性薪酬数量仅占男性的60.5%。

　　Louise Marie Roth, an American sociologist and author of "Selling Women Short: Gender and Money on Wall Street", illustrated the extreme gender inequality on Wall Street. She followed the career development of 76 male and female grads of top business schools. They all began work at big investment firms in the early 1990s. By 1997, the women were earning only 60.5 percent of what the men did。

　　另一位美国教授Linda Babcock发现，要求提薪的女性职工会被鄙视，甚至遭到处罚。而相同形势下，男同事得到的对待显然要亲切得多。其他调查显示，因工作发怒的男性一般会得到尊敬，而同样的事情发生在女性身上就成了“失控”。

　　Linda Babcock, another American professor, notes that women are looked down on, and even punished, for asking for a pay raise. Meanwhile, their male colleagues are much more favorably treated in similar situations. Other studies show that men who get angry at work are more likely to be respected for it, while women who do so are seen as being "out of control"。

　　因此，为遏制职场如此猖獗的性别歧视现象，很多政府已经出台法律法规帮助女性得到平等对待。

　　To combat such rampant discrimination in business, various governments have passed laws and regulations to help put women on a more equal footing。

　　1963年，尽管强制实行面临很大困难，美国仍发布了薪资平等法，禁止雇主由于性别原因给予不同工资待遇。2006年，欧盟采用欧洲社会宪章的日常生活中男女平等制度，要求男女平等是一项基本权利，“性别成见及其产生的观点和假设都必须消除”。

　　The US introduced the Equal Pay Act (EPA) in 1963, to "prohibit discrimination on account of sex in the payment of wages by employers", although enforcing it may be hard. In 2006, the European Union adopted The European Charter for Equality of Women and Men in Local Life. The charter says that equality between women and men is a fundamental right, and that "gender stereotypes and the attitudes and assumptions that arise from them must be eliminated."