Commission seeks to improve the gender balance in company boardrooms by consulting Europe's business schools
EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding met with the Europe's business schools to discuss how to improve the gender balance in company boardrooms by encouraging more young women to follow a career in business. On the other hand, business schools are helping women to prepare for professional careers through seminars, training programmes and providing networking opportunities.
Business schools play a crucial role in equipping young women for a career in business and helping them to reach the top. This is the reason why Viviane Reding, EU Justice Commissioner met with deans of European business schools and female business leaders to discuss the role of women in European corporate governance.
Only 12% of members of the supervisory boards at Europe's largest companies are women and in 97% of cases the board is chaired by a man. Last March, Ms Reding met chief executives and chairs of boards of publicly listed companies to discuss the under-representation of women on corporate boards. She challenged all publicly listed companies in Europe to sign up to the "Women on the Board Pledge for Europe" and commit voluntarily to increasing women's participation on corporate boards to 30% by 2015 and to 40% by 2020. Nonetheless, the progresses achieved have been very slow. At this rate, unless action is taken, it will take another 50 years before there is a reasonable gender balance (at least 40% of each sex) on supervisory boards.
The European Commission will re-assess the situation in March 2012 to see whether there has been significant progress and whether credible self-regulatory initiatives were developed to enhance women's participation in decision-making. Based on the results, the Commission will then decide on the next steps to be taken. Besides, business schools commit to help women to prepare for professional careers through seminars, training programmes and providing networking opportunities. This initiative follows Vice-President Reding's call to companies to pledge to voluntarily increase the number of women on corporate boards.