CANDACE Bushnell, who rose to fame writing about being desperate and dateless in New York City in the 1990s, now reckons women should forget bedrooms and focus on boardrooms.

The author who created Carrie Bradshaw and her three fashion-addicted friends in Sex and the City (pictured), which became a hugely popular TV series and spawned a few ordinary film spin-offs, says boardrooms lack broads.

Bushnell, 54, was in Brisbane addressing a ballroom full of women (and a few token blokes) for a Business Chicks lunch.

Amid a flurry of topics, including a previous visit to Australia when she was "several years younger with a lot less Botox", Bushnell urged women to "lean in".

She was referring to the book du jour for female professionals, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, by Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook.

The nub of the book is that women should be more outspoken, should put themselves forward for roles instead of letting men run the show.

They should aim high, instead of settling for middle management. Of course they should, but the reality is that leaning in isn't enough.

For decades plenty of intelligent, ambitious Australian women have been trying their level best to lean, climb or crash their way to the top.

The upshot? Not much.

Last year, women comprised 15.4 per cent of non-executive directors of the ASX200 companies and held 9.2 per cent of executive positions in the top 500 companies.

The Workforce Gender Equality Agency says we've had "a decade of negligible change for females in executive ranks".

Clearly, whatever we've been doing is not working.

While it's fashionable for Candace Bushnell and others including shadow treasurer Joe Hockey to crow about equality, where's the plan to achieve it?

Hockey has distanced himself from his suggestion two years ago to mandate 30 per cent women on boards, an idea Governor-General Quentin Bryce was open to because we needed to break the "old boys" stranglehold on business.

But when quotas have been effective overseas, why not try them here?

Norway, France, Belgium, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain have quotas and all have experienced a surge in female participation on boards.

Thomas Clarke, a professor of management and director of the Centre for Corporate Governance in Sydney, says in France quotas have lifted the percentage of women directors in the top 17 companies from 7.2 in 2004 to 25 today.

"The number of countries opting for mandatory quotas is increasing, though the consensus in Australia is for voluntary targets," Clarke says.

By 2015, Mirvac is hoping to have 35 per cent female board membership, Coca Cola, Brambles, Telstra and NAB 30 per cent, and Woolworths 25 per cent.

There are voluntary targets too in senior executive roles, with companies such as Westpac and Leighton Holdings shooting for 40 per cent by 2014 and 2016 respectively.

Quotas, however, remain unpopular, with the standard line being that appointments should be merit based.

They certainly should be, but quotas and merit are not mutually exclusive.

You can't tell me that for all the women who've graduated from university and entered the workforce in recent decades that only one-tenth of them are up to the task of running a company or sitting on a board.

Merit is simply an excuse used to mask the blatant discrimination that persists in this country.

In Norway, the leader in workplace equality where women are required by law to fill 40 per cent of board memberships, merit isn't a problem.

The country's top female executive Mimi Berdal sits on several boards and says she knows of no woman who is there just to make up the numbers. All are highly capable, Berdal says, and if this were not the case, nomination committees were to blame.

It stands to reason that if we create more opportunities, more people - male or female - will be able to shine.

If Australia is to pay more than lip service to the goal of equality, shouldn't we be identifying, nurturing and rewarding merit in both sexes?

History has shown we can't wait for society to catch up; the march to egalitarianism has been painfully slow.

High-flying Sydney banker Peter Hunt of Greenhill & Co admitted as much in February when he called for a change in the Corporations Act to include a quota of 25 per cent female directors on boards.

Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Liz Broderick weighed in, saying: "If it's necessary to give a jolt to a misaligned system, we should do it."

Voluntary targets are commendable but when quotas have proven successful, couldn't they be the jolt Australia needs?

Kylie Lang is the editor of Qweekend, every Saturday in The Courier-Mail

Email: kylie.lang@news.com.au