European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek has called for the implementation of quotas for female board members in a bid to boost the European economy as it crawls out of recession.
"It's time to shatter the glass ceiling for good," Buzek and Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said in an article published by the International Herald Tribune. "Making better use of women's talents is not just a matter of equality and fairness. It's a business issue. And women mean business."
They quoted a Goldman Sachs study that found that closing the gender gap could boost EU gross domestic product by 13%.
But progress has been slow. The share of female board members in the EU has increased by only half a percentage point a year in the past seven years and currently only one in 10 board members and 3% of chief executives is female.
In Russia, the situation is little better. Women make up 7% of the directors in Russia's 48 biggest companies, the Board Solutions consulting company found in February 2011.
But, unlike in the EU, the issue has hardly been addressed, largely because of the ineffective system of corporate governance in Russia.
"Before addressing the gender issue, Russian companies must first ensure that all board members are elected transparently and according to their qualifications and experience," Board Solutions partner Yaroslav Glazunov told the Vedemosti paper.
Norway pioneered the quota policy in 2003 by establishing 40% quotas for female board members. As a result, the number of women on supervisory boards rose to 42% in 2009 from 25% in 2004.
In January this year France followed suit, introducing legislation to ensure that 40% of executive board members of the largest publicly listed companies will be female by 2017. Both Germany and Austria are also debating the implementation of similar measures.
Buzek and Reding suggested allowing businesses to take the initiative in implementing self-regulatory schemes to get women into top jobs. If this doesn't work, they say, legally-binding quotas will have to be imposed across the territory of the EU.
If this happens, their ambitious target that says at least 30% of boardrooms should be female by 2015 could become a reality. And Russia will have a lot of catching up to do.
BRUSSELS, March 2 (RIA Novosti)
