The fair share

About women and quotas

Women representation in corporate boards and the need for quotas to make sure that boards do 

have women onboard seem touchy topics.

My heart is divided on this topic and I thought that maybe writing down my thoughts would actually make things clear. First, it seems nobody doubts that having a diverse professional group (board, team or other) is a plus. It is even better when that group is made of the best people available. Regarding this point, I seem aligned with the majority.

The challenge comes when you must meet the best people and the diversity requirements at the same time.

What is not measured, rarely gets done. Thus, quotas seem a good way to make sure that the diversity requirement is met. However, imposing quotas might also impose the acceptance of people whose quality and capacity are not up to what is searched for the position. I am profoundly against that!

So, what is the real problem here? Mmmm… Boards and governments are just the tip of the iceberg of a power system which has a large foundation on which the male and the female population do not have a balanced distribution.

If big corporations do not encourage women at the early stages of their career to aim at taking positions of high responsibility, if they do not integrate work/life balance policies in their companies to make sure that both bright men and bright women have exactly the same chances to make it to the top, introducing quotas might simply decrease the quality of the boards (and as a consequence back the arguments of those, generally men, that completely oppose the idea of having women running businesses).

Maybe, to start with, we should implement a fair share schema, which would have to guarantee that quotas on a board encourage a representation proportionally equal to the male-female distribution in the company executive roles (or alike). If the obtained board was not balanced, it would actually show that the company is failing to put in place the right policies to make the business successful. Shareholders beware!!!!

Governments should economically encourage and, in some extreme cases, force companies to adopt policies and to introduce metrics in their annual performance analysis that will show that progress is being made towards an even male-female distribution at the starting levels. I am not sure that board quotas can guarantee that.