Mimi Berdal

Shortly after Norway proposed a law forcing listed companies to have women as 40 per cent of their directors, Mimi Berdal’s telephone started ringing off the hook.

The former corporate lawyer was contacted by many of the 500 or so companies that were scrambling to fill their boards with the requisite number of women. She now sits on 12 boards and regularly tops newspaper lists of the most prominent businesswomen. But Ms Berdal is just one of what have become known as the “golden skirts”, a group of Norwegian women who have become full-time non-executive directors on the back of the law.