European Quotas for Women Directors Help Crack Boardroom Glass Ceilings

Washington, D.C., November 18, 2011 -- Women are cracking boardroom glass ceilings all over Europe, spurred on by new quota requirements in many countries to put women at the top, according to the latest Corporate Women Directors International study of women directors in Fortune Global 200 companies, the biggest in the world.

“Something is happening, and it’s driven by Europe,” said Irene Natividad, chair of the Washington-based international research group CWDI. “The momentum for more women on boards will change the face of the biggest companies in Europe, in the midst of the region’s ongoing financial crisis. They are ahead of the ball game.”

The major influence on many European companies -- government quotas for the number of women required to be in the boardroom, initially propelled by Norway, but since adopted in Spain, France, the Netherlands, Iceland, Italy and Belgium.

Two European women – one French, the other German – hold the keys to economic change in Europe.  Christine Lagarde, now the head of the International Monetary Fund, declared her full support for quotas for women directors while she was France’s Minister of Finance, even though she opposed it initially.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is at the helm of a country with a fierce debate raging on how to increase the number of women in corporate leadership, prompting Germany’s blue chip companies to pledge to increase women on boards to at least 30 percent by 2013. While publicly opposed to quotas, Merkel made it clear that unless progress was made, the government may intervene.

U.S. companies still lead other Fortune Global 200 companies with 20.8% women’s representation on boards, but are poised to lag behind France (20.1%) shortly, given the U.S.’s anemic rate of increase of 3.3 % since 2004, surpassed only by Japan’s 1.1 % poor showing bringing up the rear. “U.S. companies ought to do better in including women at the top of their organizations,” states Jane Shaw, Chairman of Intel, included in CWDI’s top ten best performing companies in 2011.

A company that has heard the message is General Motors, whose board composition – 4 women directors out of 11 (36.4%) – merited inclusion also in CWDI’s top ten list.  This is the first time any automobile company has made it to any list of top performers among prior studies of women directors conducted by CWDI the past 15 years.

France’s leap from only 7.2% of board seats held by women in 2004 to 20.1 percent this year was largely due to a quota law passed in 2010.  Spain, whose quota dates to 2007, also improved its percentage of women directors from 1.9 percent in 2004 to 9.2 percent in 2011.  “Quotas open doors to qualified women,” states Ana Maria Llopis, a Spaniard on the boards of Dia S.A. in Spain and Societe Generale in France, also in CWDI’s top ten list this year.

CWDI’s 2011 report also showed the impact of gender diversity language that has been included recently in corporate governance codes primarily in Europe and Australia as a requirement.  As with quotas, countries with such provisions showed higher percentages of women in board seats.

For the Asian companies experiencing growth but based in cultures with more traditional concepts of gender roles, their boards are overwhelmingly male-dominated.  U.S. and European companies, with longer-term experience in having female directors, increased their numbers even more, many driven by new efforts to accelerate women’s access to board appointments.

Given these recent initiatives, 2011 may well be a turning point.  The report clearly shows that quotas for women directors and gender diversity guidelines in corporate governance codes or stock exchange listing requirements are having an impact in moving numbers upward for women on boards at a rate not seen before