Report: Mainstreaming Gender Equality in European Leadership
Advancing on gender equality in the workplace – a managerial perspective
Since its foundation, CEC European Managers has been campaigning for gender balance at all levels of society and the labour market, including in decision-making positions at companies. Like in many other respects, managers are doubly concerned by gender equality approaches in the workplace: because disparities affect women managers directly and because they bear the responsibility of adopting the right policies to increase the share of women among the rest of the workforce.
To contribute to the ongoing debate on how to secure gender equality in our societies, CEC European Managers has published a report, developed with the support of its Gender Equality and Diversity Working Group. The report first introduces some figures and statistics to illustrate the state of the art of equality in decision-making in Europe, followed by an overview of recommendations (drawn from recent initiatives) on policy options that can prove effective to support women reach leadership positions in companies. In the final section the paper looks at the pending proposal for a directive on gender balance in company boards as an example for a concrete intervention in the field.
“Self-regulation can be an effective tool to promote change from within companies. However, when this strategy does not bring about change at the right pace, targeted legislative measures setting quotas to ensure a minimum presence of the underrepresented gender in company boards are needed” commented Ebba Ohlund, Deputy Secretary General of CEC European Managers and char of the Working Group. ” We we call on all stakeholders and institutional actors to come together identifying joint solutions in order to improve the content of the proposal and transform it into reality” added Ebba Ohlund.
You can download the report (only in English) here