Mariella Radaelli and Jon Van Housen :
How much gender parity – the equal representation of women and men in decision-making positions – has been achieved in Europe? The tide is certainly turning with more women elevated into leadership roles, but even in liberal Europe it remains largely a man’s world.
According to a new study by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), the number of women holding decision-making positions has gradually increased over the past 10 years in fields ranging from politics and business to media. But even as the latest figures show a slow but steady path toward gender balance, unseen barriers still exist in organisations and companies.
A record number of women are now political leaders in Europe. Some popular names include: Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic in Croatia, Estonia’s Kersti Kaljulaid, and Germany’s Angela Merkel, who is chancellor for a third term. Others in high positions are Katrin Sjögren, head of Finland’s Åland autonomous region, Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, president of Malta, and Beata Szydlo, prime minister of Poland. Theresa May and Queen Elizabeth II serve as leaders in the UK, while other non-EU members Norway and Switzerland also have female presidents.
But the new study by EIGE found that women representatives account for just 29 per cent of members in national parliaments across Europe. The figure varies considerably, from 46.1 per cent in Sweden to 9.5 per cent in Hungary.
The study shows that women are often appointed to stereotypical nurturing and “feminine” minister portfolios such as education, health and culture. EIGE data on business and finance shows an upward trend in the number of women in boardrooms since 2010, when the issue became a priority on the European Commission’s political agenda. The proportion of women on the boards of the largest listed companies in the EU doubled from 11.9 per cent in 2010 to 24 per cent in 2016.
Yet at the pinnacle of top management, men are still making the vast majority of decisions, with only 5.7 per cent of CEO positions held by women. Researchers say that a company cannot achieve its potential unless it has a diverse group of talented people, and that includes at least 40 per cent of each gender. Men and women have different approaches to decision making, with female leadership “transformational in nature,” according to anthropologist Natalie Porter.
Women seek “to empower and enhance the effectiveness of team members while striving to improve the lives and social conditions of all stakeholders including those indirectly affected such as consumers and other members of society,” writes Porter.
According to the nonprofit Catalyst, an organisation for women’s workplace inclusion, the latest figures on management and business hold some surprises. While Italy is performing much better that the global average with more than a quarter (29 per cent) of women in senior roles, Germany languishes near the bottom of the rankings below Ireland (19 per cent) and the Netherlands (18 per cent).
Maria Saab, a research fellow at the New America Foundation, noted that “despite having a female chancellor and quotas requiring a third of non-executive board members be women, in Germany just 15 per cent of senior roles are held by women”.
The UK also ranked lower than the global average of 24 per cent in 2016. Women’s representation in senior management in the UK declined slightly from 22 per cent in 2015 to 22 per cent last year.
Investment manager Gina Miller, who has filed a court case challenging the British government’s authority to implement Brexit without approval from parliament, expressed strong concerns about women’s rights after Brexit and removal of EU efforts on gender equality. Pamela Harless, Chief People and Culture Officer at the accounting and advisory network Grant Thornton, suggests the gap could be because the UK’s culture of leadership does not value more feminine characteristics.
But the poorest performance in the UK for women is in the oil-engineering sector. While statistics for the rest of European countries show there has been a slight increase in female talents, in the UK only 7 per cent of engineering professionals in the oil sector are women, by far, one of the lowest rates in Europe for female professionals in the field.
A Catalyst study shows that overall, Eastern Europe leads in gender-diverse leadership: women filled 45 per cent of senior roles in 2016 in Russia, while Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have an average of 35 per cent.
The judiciary’s role in society is balanced with 40 per cent of Supreme Court judges now women across EU countries.
But the often politically correct media in Europe doesn’t follow it through in its own operations. The EIGE found that that among decision-making bodies in TV, radio and news agencies, 34 per cent are women, and 66 per cent are men. This is despite the fact that nearly two-thirds of journalism graduates are women, showing that a minority tends to advance to senior posts compared to men. But the trend is improving, with the ratio of women holding board seats in journalism rising from 30.4 per cent in 2014 to 35 per cent in 2016.
(Mariella Radaelli and Jon Van Housen are editors at the Luminosity Italia news agency in Milan, Italy)
