THE EUROPEAN UNION’S justice commissioner has threatened publicly listed companies with imposed gender quotas if they don’t appoint more women to corporate boards.
Viviane Reding said today that European companies should commit voluntarily to fill 30 per cent of all board positions with women by 2015. She wants that figure to rise to 40 per cent by 2020.
Reding says the companies have 12 months to self-regulate. She said the companies should become creative “so that regulators do not have to become creative”.
EU data shows that currently only 12 per cent of board members at Europe’s biggest firms are women. Over the past seven years, their presence has increased by half a percentage point.
The EU says at this rate reaching the 40 per cent target will take 50 years. -AP
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say