More American female executives are taking seats in Europe's boardrooms, in part because companies there face mandates to add women directors.

While most European companies are focusing their board recruiting efforts on European women, many of them also are seeking candidates who can help them expand their American contacts and sales.

A Seat at the Table A sampling of Europe's boardroom newcomers Françoise Brougher: Background: A vice president of Google; European Board: Sodexo of France; Joined: January 2012 Google Nora Mead Brownell: Background: ex-member of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; European Board: National Grid; Joined: June 2012 National Grid PLC Joyce Bigio: Background: Managing partner, International Accounting Solutions; European Board: Fiat of Italy; Joined: April 2012 Fiat SpA

Consider Françoise Brougher. The Google Inc. vice president, a French native and a U.S. citizen since 2004, joined the board of Sodexo SA in January. The global food-services and facilities-management company, which is based near Paris, depends on North America for 32% of its revenue.

Sodexo picked Ms. Brougher partly because she "talks like an American executive" and understands new technology, said Patricia S. Bellinger, head of the company's board-nominating committee and its first female director from the U.S.

Ms. Brougher declined to comment.

As European boards look to meet their gender goals, they also hope to check a few more boxes by snagging American women with expertise in hot areas such as digital media, emerging markets and accounting, said Susan Stautberg, co-founder of Women Corporate Directors, a professional group in New York. Those with dual citizenship and European work experience get bonus points, according to Ms. Stautberg.

European companies "really do want American women,'' said Ms. Bellinger, executive director of executive education for Harvard Business School. Several executive recruiters also describe a recent groundswell in European boards' pursuit of American female business leaders, partly because the U.S. has a larger pool of senior executive women.

A 2011 French law requires corporate boards to be at least 20% female by January 2014, or directors won't get their fees.

Women represented 22% of board members at France's biggest public companies in January 2012, nearly twice the about 12% in October 2010, according to a European Commission report. In the U.S., by comparison, women held 16% of the directorships at Fortune 500 companies as of 2011, according to Catalyst, a nonprofit group that researches women's issues.

Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Iceland and Italy recently enacted similar statutes. The U.K. and Swedish governments have embraced voluntary targets. Britain hopes women will occupy 25% of boardroom positions at the biggest companies by 2015. Sweden is aiming for boards composed equally of men and women.

Since January, at least six other U.S. women besides Ms. Brougher have landed board seats at big European companies, including Anglo American PLC, Fiat SpA and Nokia Corp. There are 96 American women with a total of 136 corporate directorships in 12 European nations, according to an analysis this month by executive recruiter Spencer Stuart.

By 2017, the Spencer Stuart figures "will certainly double and may triple," said Ms. Stautberg, whose group has about 1,500 members on 1,800 boards world-wide. She said European businesses frequently fought proposed quota legislation as unnecessary, then began heavily wooing prospective female directors once the laws passed.

The race for American women has led to some women receiving a number of offers. Among those in demand is U.S.-born Jan Babiak, a veteran Ernst & Young managing partner who became a professional director when she retired from the firm in 2009 at age 51 after two decades in Britain, where she acquired citizenship.

Ms. Babiak said that not long after joining the board of Logica PLC, a U.K. information-technology-services company, now part of CGI Group Inc., she turned away offers or feelers about serving on the board of 10 other European concerns, typically due to schedule conflicts.

One of them was Smiths Group PLC, a technology firm eager to increase its U.S. presence. Tanya Fratto, a former chief executive of Diamond Innovations Inc. whom Ms. Babiak recommended to Smiths, was named its first American director on July 1. The Smiths announcement cited Ms. Fratto's U.S. operating experience. "America is our single most important market," a Smiths spokesman said. Ms. Fratto became the second woman on the eight-member board, helping the company hit the U.K.'s voluntary target for female directors.

"Smiths was first attracted to me because I was an accomplished woman with an electrical-engineering background," Ms. Fratto said. But she believes she ultimately won the board seat "because of my extensive and successful experience in running a number of businesses."

Other European companies find it harder to attract a U.S. female board member. "The fundamental obstacles are geography and time," said Luke Meynell, who coleads the European board practice for executive recruiter Russell Reynolds Associates Inc.

European boards convene an average of nine times a year, 50% more than their American counterparts, according to the National Association of Corporate Directors. It says board service and travel consumes an estimated 300 hours a year in Europe, more than a U.S. board's annual average of 227.5 hours.

Independent European directors tend to be compensated in cash and less than counterparts at U.S.-based businesses, where rewards mainly consist of stock, surveys show.

Betsy Atkins, a veteran American venture capitalist, has rejected four or five more European directorships since her 2011 election to the board of Schneider Electric SA, an electrical engineering and power-management concern. She doesn't know which attributes attracted those businesses to her, but said she has served on about 25 public-company boards.

"I have a full plate," said Ms. Atkins, also a director of Polycom Inc. and two other U.S. companies. In April, she used videoconferencing to attend a California board meeting of San Jose-based Polycom after attending a Schneider meeting in Paris.

Some U.S. women may be put off by the idea they are filling a quota. Will Dawkins, head of Spencer Stuart's U.K. board-services practice, said he can "well imagine that it would be an issue when [women] consider positions on boards in countries that have female quotas, such as Norway, France and Italy."

While seeking additional directors last year, struggling Finnish cellphone maker Nokia preferred at least one American woman with a finance background and West Coast perspective, said Mr. Dawkins. The hunt, which the search firm handled, "was quite difficult because of the travel" the directorship required, prompting several U.S.-based female candidates to reject the opportunity, he said. Nokia held 19 board meetings in 2011, according to its annual report.

Nokia wanted at least one director "based and strongly networked in Silicon Valley," said a spokesman, who denied that gender or cultural background influenced the search. (Finland's regulation says both sexes should be represented on boards but doesn't specify any percentages or timetables.)

Elizabeth Nelson, a former finance chief at Macromedia Inc., a Web-development software concern, was among three newcomers elected to Nokia's board at its May 3 annual meeting.

Despite Europe's so-called pink quotas, American women living there sometimes spend months pursuing their first European directorship because they must first develop key local connections. Joyce Bigio is typical. The U.S.-born managing partner of International Accounting Solutions in Milan holds Italian citizenship and spent most of her career in Italy.

Two years ago, Ms. Bigio landed on a list of 150 women in Italy qualified for corporate board service. She said she "started actively campaigning for a board position" the following year, after Italy passed a law requiring that women make up one-third of board members at listed and state-owned enterprises by 2015. Ms. Bigio identified business targets, attended a seminar in Rome for potential female directors and buttonholed recruiters. Through one such recruiter, a group representing Fiat minority investors proposed her for the board of Italy's largest car maker by sales.

The company, which controls U.S.-based Chrysler, selects directors "irrespective of nationality or sex," a spokesman said. But This spring, Fiat opened its boardroom doors to two women for the first time in the Italian auto maker's 113-year history. One of them was Ms. Bigio.

Fiat now meets the Italian quota law, which took effect in August.