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10 years after its implementation, we explore the equality reach of the 40 per cent Norwegian gender quota regulation for boards of public limited companies (PLCs) using a multi-strategy approach (administrative data and interviews with women directors) to capture interrelated macro and meso changes. We employ Acker's (2006) inequality regimes as our analytical framework, augmented by the 'equality reach' concept. We found strong compliance with the 40 per cent Quota. However, there was little evidence of voluntary spillover to limited companies as envisaged by Quota proponents; instead Quota coverage reduced as some PLCs changed status to avoid the Quota requirement. We reveal that positive equality reach in one of the most equal countries in the world is confined to a PLC 'quota silo', which has shrunk over the life of the Quota. Moreover, we suggest that PLC high levels of compliance may be a defensive strategy seen as necessary in the regulatory/high sanction context of the Quota. We demonstrate the need for further political and organisational interventions to improve equality reach beyond the quota silo. We also show the value of the equality reach concept for research on equality interventions and warn of the dangers of an intervention leading to an equality silo.

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While Scandinavian countries are deemed the most equal in the world, vertical sex segregation remains resilient in the Scandinavian academy. This article investigates women’s equality in universities in three Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, countries where women’s share of professorships is below the [European Union] EU average. It explores the perception of Swedish, Danish and Norwegian women academics with respect to sex equality, hiring and discrimination. In doing so, it exposes the resilience of inequality regimes in Scandinavian universities and thereby questions the reality of sex equality in countries deemed the ‘most equal’. However, the article also finds that Norwegian respondents were less likely to report discrimination and it reflects on the reasons for differences between the Scandinavian countries.

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