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The Senate of the Dutch parliament has voted in favour of legislation aimed at ensuring women occupy 30% of all management positions before 2016 – a tenfold increase on the current number. The Netherlands lags behind other West European countries such as Germany and France in terms of women executives. The government took over this proposal from the previous cabinet, but it remains to be seen whether voluntary compliance will be enough to achieve such an ambitious target.
At the end of May 2011, the Senate (Eerste Kamer) of the Dutch parliament voted in favour of a legislative proposal stipulating that 30% of all management positions must be occupied by women before 2016. Currently just 8% of managers are women.
Sanctions have not yet been linked to achieving the target figure. However while it is not a statutory quota, companies that fail to achieve the target figure will be required to explain why, and to clarify what steps they intend to take to rectify the situation.
As a result of a cabinet collapse, elections and the subsequent formation of a new cabinet, the legislative proposal was only passed by the Senate after a year and a half.
While the current cabinet is not in favour of a quota for female employees or legislation on diversity, the proposal had already been tabled and – albeit with some delay – the cabinet defended it.
At a conference of the Talent to the Top foundation, Prime Minister Mark Rutte emphasised that the business community needs women in executive positions, saying that modest progress had so far been achieved.
For example, he heads up a government with three female ministers, out of a total of 12 ministers. This figure of 25% outstrips the national average of more than 17%. As a liberal politician, the prime minister does not support imposing policy on diversity issues; however, he does believe there needs to be a cultural shift.
Around 187 institutions have adopted the Talent to the Top Charter, which aims to elevate more women to higher staff levels, including management positions.
Since 2010, the number of female executives in the Netherlands has grown by 7.5%, bringing the total in 2011 to more than 17%. Although former Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) minister and former employers’ chairperson Sybilla Dekker is satisfied with the increase in the number of companies that have signed the charter, it cannot be denied that some simply ignore it.
There is also an imbalance: consultants and lawyers are over-represented, while there is under-representation in industry, construction and IT. Only seven of the 25 companies listed on the Dutch stock market index AEX have signed the charter.
Mrs Dekker sees multinationals, including Heineken and Unilever as a point of concern, however the companies see the charter as focusing too much on the Netherlands. The Talent to the Top committee has agreed to adjust the charter to reflect this.
Perhaps illustrative of how things actually work in the world of business, Prime Minister Rutte who was himself a former Unilever employee, called the company and Unilever signed on the dotted line.
Legislation should lead to more evenly balanced composition in the boardroom. The target figure applies to all companies with more than 250 employees; the 30% standard applies to the management board and the supervisory board. If the target figures are not achieved, this must be accounted for in the annual report.
The legislation will be assessed in three years’ time. In various EU countries, including France and Germany, a stringent quota policy is pursued and comparative European studies show that at 8% the Netherlands lags far behind its neighbours in terms of management boards. Norway has successfully adopted the most far-reaching measures – there failure to achieve the quota results in the imposition of sanctions, including fines (NL0804049I).
In the Netherlands, a choice has again been made to apply target figures without heavy sanctions, while those who support a harder approach point out that little progress has been made in years of voluntary participation. For many years, the Netherlands has scored below 10%. Now, within the space of four years, the number of female executives at listed companies must be boosted from 3.4% to 35% – or in absolute terms, from 9 to 100 women. The number of female supervisory directors is also expected to triple from 56 to 176. It remains to be seen whether the soft-handed approach will work.
Marianne Grünell, University of Amsterdam