One third of board members in decision-making bodies should be women within three years, the European Parliament says.
Spontaneously, it ain’t gonna happen. Colleagues, it is now time to take action
This should rise to 40 per cent by 2020, the EP said in a resolution.
The recommendations pile pressure on the European Commission to introduce obligatory quotas. They come just days after European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said that countries’ voluntary action to boost women’s participation in this realm had failed.
The EP resolution was approved by 361 MEPs in favour, 268 against and 70 abstentions.
Ms Reding said that such a signal might push forward her timetable and propose quotas by the end of this year.
“The resolution, which calls for increasing female representation in corporate management bodies, is an important contribution to the consultation the Commission launched last week on how to improve the gender balance at the top of Europe’s large companies,” she said.
The resolution’s rapporteur, Dutch Liberal MEP Sophia In’t Veld, urged the EP and the Commission to take tough initiatives to tackle inequality.
“Spontaneously, it ain’t gonna happen. Colleagues, it is now time to take action,” she said. According to a report published by the Commission last week, boardrooms across the EU remain male dominated. In Malta, the situation is worse and the island has the lowest presence of women in boardrooms among the 27 member states.
Last year, only 14 per cent of company directors in the EU were female. In Malta, the percentage drops to just three per cent; closely followed by Cyprus (four per cent) and Hungary (five per cent).
The Nordics are the most advanced in this area with Finland topping the list with 27 per cent, followed by Latvia (26 per cent) and Sweden (25 per cent).
The report shows that while only 29 per cent of boards in the EU do not include at least one woman, in Malta the figures rises to 79 per cent, the highest in the EU.
The EP resolution also tackled the issue of the gender pay gap, which has narrowed only slightly in recent years in the EU. On average, women in the EU earn 17.5 per cent less than men and only 12 per cent of executives are women.
The In’t Veld resolution calls for an EU equal pay target to narrow the gender pay gap by 10 per cent in each EU country.
Last year, Malta had one of the lowest gender pay gaps in the EU at just 8.1 per cent.