Oil helps, of course. But ultimately, the Nordic success story isn’t about lucrative natural resources — Sweden, Finland and Denmark can’t rely on fossil fuel reserves — but lucrative human resources: The region combines the world’s highest female employment rates with some of the most impressive fertility rates in developed countries — one reason why it has weathered the crisis with solid public finances and respectable growth (Iceland being the notable exception).

“One Norwegian lesson,” Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said from his modestly sized office one afternoon, “is that if you can raise female participation, it helps the economy, birth rates and the budget.”

Many Norwegian women work part time and for the public sector. Female chief executives and engineers remain nearly as rare as elsewhere in the West. But 75 percent of Norwegian women work outside the home, compared with 68 percent in the United States and 65 percent in the European Union.

That didn’t happen by itself. Norway was the first country to invent a “fathers’ quota” that has reserved a growing part of the yearlong paid parental leave for dads since 1993. On July 1, the quota will rise to 12 weeks from 10. Nine in 10 fathers share parental leave, up from about 2 percent 20 years ago, enabling women to go back to work sooner.

It was also the first country to impose a female quota for board directors in about 400 publicly listed and state-owned companies, lifting the share of women to 40 percent, from about 7 percent in 2003.

All told, family policy, including a system of child care from a guaranteed place for 1-year-olds to after-school and vacation care, costs the Norwegian government 2.8 percent of gross domestic product. “These policies are expensive, but their cost is offset by the return in terms of female labor supply and tax revenues,” says Danielle Venn, a labor economist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Even excluding oil, Oslo’s deficit of 5.4 percent of G.D.P. is a percentage point below the E.U. average.

It is a cautionary tale — and not just for Europe’s less productive, indebted southern rim, which was traditionally slow on women’s advancement. Other countries are passing austerity programs that risk hurting women’s work prospects. In Britain, for example, maternity and child care benefits are being cut, as are half a million public-sector jobs, most of which are held by women.

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As many write the obituary of the welfare state, how much can other countries learn from the Nordic model?

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Skeptics argue that all the Nordics are small and homogeneous countries where social cohesion is high. But Professor Erling Barth at the Institute for Social Research and Oslo University says economic incentives, rather than population size or temperament, explain behavioral patterns. “We are not all that different in Norway,” he noted.

Indeed, a number of large countries have recently started importing some of the social engineering: Germany, which with its 82 million inhabitants is 17 times the size of Norway, has earmarked two of 14 months paid parental leave for dads. The share of fathers taking time off with baby surged to more than 25 percent today from 3 percent in 2007.

France, Spain and the Netherlands are phasing in boardroom quotas; several others are mulling legislation.

If some laws can be exported, it might be trickier to copy and paste the Nordic pragmatism that seems to inform policy-making here. As I went around Oslo’s ministries, company headquarters and union offices (in a trip partly organized by the government but paid for by the International Herald Tribune), I witnessed none of the ideological squabbling that is now a hallmark of once-effective institutions, from France’s labor movement to the U.S. Congress.

Having lived for the past decade in Paris, where small but bellicose unions constantly spoil for a fight with management in what they consider a capitalist zero-sum game, I was stunned to hear Ms. Opjordsmoen tell me matter-of-factly: “Everyone agrees that there is a common economic goal.”

Every two years, her union calculates wage demands by closely examining the cost base and demand situation of Norway’s export industries and then working back from that. “We negotiate for exporters first. No other industry gets more,” she explained.

Bosses seem no less pragmatic. At the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise, attracting more female talent is seen as a “business imperative.” Its chief, John G. Bernander, would like the fathers’ quota to rise to a third of all leave, from a fifth.

Mr. Bernander is no fan of the boardroom quota but accepts that it has energized efforts to empower female managers. “Put these middle-aged men in pinstriped suits on the defensive and they’ll actually come out with some good ideas,” he quips.

Economically literate unions and employers may be necessary ingredients of a 21st-century welfare state. But nothing works without an electorate willing to pay taxes, the prime minister notes. Tax revenue accounts for 42 percent of G.D.P. here, compared with a 35 percent O.E.C.D. average.

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“Many European countries have been trying to achieve the tax level of the U.S. and the welfare level of Scandinavia. That’s not possible,” said Mr. Stoltenberg. “We won two elections promising not to lower taxes. Voters know: Tax cuts mean welfare cuts.”