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More Efforts Needed to Improve Gender Equality in Corporate Governance in the EU

The workforce in the EU is decreasing significantly compared to the US and Japan. This problem can to some extent be solved by having more women at the workplace. The European Commission is currently contemplating the introduction of obligatory quotas for women in the boardroom of private companies. In order to have a better understanding of the controversial and currently highly debated issue of obligatory gender diversity programmes in corporate governance, the Commission released a Green Paper on the EU Corporate Governance Framework in April 2011. By means of this Green Paper, the Commission invites all interested parties to submit their views on some important questions such as: should recruitment policies be more specific about the profile of directors to ensure that the board is suitably diverse? If so, how could that be best achieved and at what level of governance, i.e., national, EU or international? The present paper seeks to give an answer to these questions of the Commission. It examines at what level of governance gender diversity in the boardroom can be best achieved and also studies the effectiveness of obligatory and voluntary gender quotas in corporate governance as a tool to increase gender diversity in the boardroom.