The number of women in senior positions at Dutch listed companies has increased again this year, with 37 new female directors and supervisory board members appointed, according to the annual Female Board Index.

Women made up 38% of new appointments, up from 33% last year. Of the 34 new executive directors, nine were women, while 28 of the 63 new supervisory board members were female. The index tracks gender representation at 82 listed companies and is compiled by Tilburg University professor Mijntje Lückerath.

“With female directors we’re seeing steady growth after last year’s record number of appointments, and with supervisory board members the trend has been positive for much longer,” Lückerath told broadcaster NOS.

Since January 2022, listed companies have been required by law to ensure that at least one third of supervisory board members are women and one third are men. Seventy of the 82 listed companies now meet that target.

Seventeen companies now meet the one-third threshold in both their executive and supervisory boards. Wolters Kluwer and technology group Hydratec top the list with 60% women, followed by ABN Amro on 53%.

The gap between directors and supervisory board members reflects the talent pool available to companies, she says. Executives usually move up from within companies, making the pool of candidates smaller, whereas supervisory board members can be recruited from outside.

Some Dutch firms have scrapped or downgraded their formal diversity policies this year, citing a US law introduced under former president Donald Trump that bans contractors to the US government from having inclusion and diversity rules.

These include engineering group Arcadis and chip machine manufacturer ASML, both of which operate extensively in the US market, according to institutional investors group Eumedion.

Lückerath said the policy change had not yet affected the figures. “Many companies are motivated themselves to increase these percentages,” she said. But firms with substantial US government contracts were “in a formal sense” scaling back their policies, she said.

“In practice, I think it will not matter much,” she said. “The road to diversity has already been taken, both in terms of gender balance and in other forms of diversity.”