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Women failing to get on board in Europe

By Debbie Carter (21-07-2006)
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Learning and Development News - Women failing to get on board in Europe

The boards of Europe\'s top companies are still failing to employ sufficient numbers of women, according to a new study by the European Professional Women’s Network.
The study showed that, in Europe as a whole, Portugal is the worst offender with not a single woman on the board of any of its major companies.

Women occupy just 8.5 per cent of the 4,500 corporate boardroom seats available, up by only a fraction on 2004, according to the study. The exceptions are the Scandinavian countries, which are markedly more gender-balanced. Norway has 28.8 per cent (up from 22 per cent in 2004) board seats accounted for by women, after its government introduced a new 45 per cent quota of women required within publicly listed companies. Sweden has 22.8 per cent women on its board, Finland 20 per cent and Denmark 17.9 per cent.

Although the number of companies with at least one woman on the board has increased over the past two years (from 62% to 67.8%) within the other European nations, the situation has largely stagnated. The UK now has 85.9 per cent of its boards boasting at least one woman, but the percentage of female directors has shifted only slightly from 10 per cent in 2004 to just 11.4 per cent.

Right across the continent, women holding the top post is extremely rare. Of the 385 board positions occupied by women, the report showed that only three were described as being chairwoman and four were chief executives.
Excluding Scandinavia, Europe falls well behind US businesses, where women account for around 14.7 per cent of Fortune 500 corporate boards. Only 10 per cent of US companies have no women on the board, compared with 32.2 per cent in Europe.

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