Female boardroom quota backed by MPs
26-10-2009
Plans to make at least 30% of top company executives female will be debated in parliament later on Monday, the Volkskrant reports.
The scheme would require big firms to make sure 30% of their management and supervisory boards are women. It has the support of the ruling Christian Democrats and Labour (PvdA) as well as the opposition Liberals (VVD), giving it a majority in parliament, the paper says.
If the plan is accepted, companies which do not meet the quota will have to draw up an improvement plan. The quota would only affect firms with at least 250 employees.
The paper quotes research by Erasmus University which shows just 14 of the 116 senior appointments made at stock-exchange listed companies last year were women. And two-thirds of the 107 listed companies have no women on either board.
KPN
In an interview with the Volkskrant on Saturday, KPN CEO Ad Scheepbouwer said the telecom giant would reserve some senior positions for women only. Currently 17% of KPN's executives are female and efforts to improve that had not delivered enough, Scheepbouwer was quoted as saying.
It is not yet clear which jobs will be singled out for female candidates. 'We have to be more aware of the way we deal with the fact women are less likely to apply for these jobs,'KPN's head of diversity Marion Koopman told Nos tv.
'You can do that in two ways,' she said. 'You can stimulate women and you can look at which women would be suitable for certain jobs.'
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