The European Union mulls gender quotas on company boards

Published by S. Mally, September 2010, Barcelona (Spain)

The European Commission is considering introducing quotas to tackle gender imbalances in the decision-making bodies of private companies where only 10% of members are women.

Specifically, Mrs. Viviane Reding, Vice-President of the European Commission, considers introducing an initial 20% quota to be applied by 2015 as a last resort should companies prove incapable of voluntarily adapting their gender balance.

Unfortunately, and despite of the fact that several studies demonstrate that a higher presence of women in top jobs has a positive effect on economic growth, only one in ten board members of Europe’s top listed companies are women and the representation of women among CEOs of the biggest companies is even lower, at 3%.

In the political field gender equality is also far from being a reality: in Europe only 24% of members of national parliaments are women and only 27% of government members are female.

So although it is clear that equality in decision-making is not yet a fact, for the moment the commissioner will just monitor companies’ behavior until the end of 2011 without taking any specific action.