EU rights commissioner warns of laws to put more women in boardrooms

The European commission has warned companies that if they do not move voluntarily to ensure gender balance on executive boards, it will force them to. Fundamental rights commissioner Viviane Reding told the European parliament: "Equality in decision-making is not yet a fact ... I do not rule out the possibility of putting forward legislation in this area." According to her spokesman, Matthew Newman, the centre-right Luxembourgeois commissioner is giving companies a year to sort out imbalances. If they do not act, Brussels will consider legislation and other measures committing them to the sort of quotas that have recently been introduced in Spain and some German states. "We've put this out as a warning. We want to see some real action," he told the Guardian. In the corporate world, men account for nearly 89% of board members in Europe's biggest listed companies. At the very top, the disparity is even starker: only 3% of firms have a woman in charge. In her previous job as "information society" commissioner, responsible for telecoms and information technology, Reding's biggest victory was over mobile phone operators, forcing them to cut roaming rates for telephone calls and data downloads. She warned operators she would legislate in a year if they did not act. When they did not, she slashed rates unilaterally. "It's a similar tactic to what she did with roaming," said Newman. "She'd prefer not to legislate, so she is giving them a chance to make changes voluntarily. Next year we'll see what we will do, but we need to give companies time to react." The commission says it is to early to say whether it will legislate or use other mechanisms at its disposal, "but quotas is one of the options," according to Newman. The scale of any quota has yet to be determined, but Reding has said she is impressed with action recently taken by Deutsche Telekom to guarantee a minimum 30% of its boardroom seats will be filled by women. Regional governments in Germany also recently agreed to impose gender quotas and Spain's national government in 2007 passed a bill requiring firms with more than 250 employees to maintain a 40% quota. Reding has said that she supports both moves. She notes that, according to a recent Finnish study, firms which have gender-balanced boards are on average 10% more profitable than those with all-male boards. In the autumn, she is to present a wider gender strategy for the EU, central to which will be policy proposals to ensure equal pay for work of equal value.