Professional equality: the EU imposes a quota of women on the boards of listed companies

Without quotas, “it would take 140 years before parity was achieved,” said Christine Lagarde in 2021, then President of the European Central Bank. Imposing a minimum quota of women to achieve equality may be creepy, but the method is proven. Running out of time to wait, the European Union ended up adopting this measure. According to AFP, the European Parliament approved new rules on Tuesday 22 November. Among these, the obligation for large listed companies (more than 250 employees) to apply a minimum quota of women on their boards of directors.

A timid provision that does not impose equality

“We now have a European law to break the glass ceiling in listed company boards”, welcomed the European Commission in a press release. If it took ten years for Parliament to reach an agreement, the application of this new rule should happen more quickly.

Member states have two years to transpose the directive into national law and businesses have until July 2026 to catch up. While this measure goes in the direction of progress for women, we can nevertheless regret that it is not bolder, because it does not impose total equality. Indeed, companies will have to put in place “transparent hiring procedures” so that“at least 40% of non-executive directorships (who does not exercise a managerial function within the company) or 33% of all director positions occupied by the underrepresented sex”, i.e. women most of the time.

Paper penalties

If the quotas are not applied in time, the companies concerned “will have to specify how they intend to implement them” visible on their website. Finally, if the appointment procedures are not “open and transparent”, each member state will have to introduce “dissuasive and proportionate sanctions”, such as fines. How far states will play along remains to be seen, and as far as France is concerned this shouldn’t be a big deal. On this point, for once, France is more of an example. Since 27 January 2011, the Copé-Zimmermann law has already imposed a minimum quota of 40% of women on the boards of directors of large companies. Today they represent 45.3% of the workforce.

Cover image: Unsplash / Mario Gogh