Women only hold 2.7 per cent of seats in Maltese boardrooms and the country almost made no progress in having more female executives over the past four years, according to a European Commission report.

Based on statistics compiled until April, Malta was ranked last out of 28 member states in terms of the number of women sitting on boards of companies listed on the stock exchange.

Malta seems to just be paying lip service to the need for gender balance in top posts

Although the EU is pushing for a directive legally binding member states to drastically increase the number of women board members, in Malta their number grew by just 0.3 per cent since 2010. On the other hand, all but a few other EU member states have made substantial progress and boosted female representation on boards.

“Malta seems to just be paying lip service to the need for gender balance in top posts,” a Commission official told Times of Malta yesterday. “The island needs to increase its efforts as the number of women graduating from university and joining the workforce is growing at a rapid pace.”

Until April this year, 18.6 per cent of board members of the EU’s largest publicly listed companies were women. This represents a rise of 0.8 percentage points since the last time data was collected in October 2013.

There are only five countries – Latvia, France, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands – where women account for at least a quarter of board members.

At the end of 2012, due to the slow rate of change, the European Commission, with the support of the European Parliament, put forward a new legislative directive so that, by the end of this decade, member states would strive for a minimum of 40 per cent of each sex among non-executive directors. The directive is being discussed by member states and is expected to be approved shortly.

If implemented, the directive will only affect about 10 Maltese companies now listed on the stock exchange because SMEs and private companies will be excluded.