LAST YEAR, Mónica de Oriol, who was then president of the Círculo de Empresarios – a Spanish lobbying group -, caused controversy with a speech in which she declared that she would rather “hire a 45-year-old woman or one under 25, because if she gets pregnant, I would have a problem”. The controversy caused by her words forced her to retract and apologize. However, Oriol was voicing one of the main arguments that employers use, implicit or explicitly, to avoid hiring women or putting them in charge. This reasoning is clearly reflected in statistics: according to data from the European Commission on 33 of the largest companies in Spain, only 9% of the people chairing a board of directors is a woman and female directors are only 17% of the members. By the way, one of them is Oriol herself: she has a seat in OHL’s council since 2012.
THIS SCARCE female presence in boards is not a Spanish trait only. That meagre 9% places our country in the 16th position in Europe and above both the continent’s (8%) and the European Union’s average (7%). Of course, it is a Nordic country that leads the ranking: in Iceland, women chair 43% of the boards under analysis. However, we find at the top of the list some other countries that one would not usually label as equality champions: in Slovakia and Macedonia, 30% of the committees’ chairpersons are female. In Poland, they are 25%. Grant Thornton explains why in its report about Women in business 2015. The authors highlight Eastern Europe figures and link them to a mix of history, culture and demography: “Women were promoted into new service industries under the old Soviet Union, which was keen to show that ‘equality of opportunity’ under communism included equality between genders”.
GERMANY, Hungary and Sweden are in line with the EU’s average. The share of boards’ chairwomen in those countries is 7%. Surprisingly, Finland (4%), Denmark and the Netherlands (the two latest not having a single woman as board head) are in this case far away from the typical portrait as an example to follow in equality matters.
Source: European Commission
THE PICTURE IS quite different, however, when it comes to analysing female presence on the boards as a whole. Spain is now to be found below the European average: only 17% of the directors are women, while they are 21% in the EU. Iceland keeps the first position (44% female board members), and is now followed by Norway, France, Latvia or Finland. Only Iceland and Norway (none of them in the EU), and France have approved quota legislation applying to the boards of directors in private companies. In these three countries the law imposes a 40% minimum threshold. According to data reported by the Norwegian authorities, in 2002, women accounted for just 6% of directors. Today this figure is 36%. Denmark (26%) and Finland (30%) have only set rules for the state-owned companies.
Source: European Commission
"Iceland leads the rankings, with 44% directors and 43% chairwomen"
WITH 25% of directors being women, Germany passed last March a quota law imposing at least 30% female counsellors in a hundred corporations by 2016. According to Grant Thorton, that extends the scope to include medium-sized businesses, women in top positions in German companies do not even reach 15%.
IN SPAIN, the 2007 Gender Equality Law invites large companies to “try to” promote “a balanced presence of women and men [on the boards of directors]” by 2015. However, it imposes no sanctions for those who do not comply with the law, so it is more of a recommendation than a legal mandate. The European Commission, in turn, has proposed a directive to establish a female 40% quota by 2020, although it is not yet in force. Spain’s CNMV, the stock market regulator, approved last February its new non-compulsory Corporate Governance Code recommending companies to include at least 30% female directors in five years’ time.