France Leads EU Gender Diversity on Board of Directors – Italy Quickly Closing the Gap

In the corporate world, Boards of Directors have traditionally had a much higher percentage of male members vs. female members. Research we released this past summer showed that worldwide, more than 17% of Boards still have no female members at all, and only 4.1% are made up of 50% or more women. 

This Fall, the European Parliament passed a law to address this gender discrepancy, requiring the inclusion of a minimum of 40 percent women on non-executive European company boards by 2026. According to 2022 research from the European Institute for Gender Equality, just 31.5% of board members at the EU’s largest publicly listed companies are women, well short of the proposed 40% target.

Although we are three years before this legislation takes effect, some European countries have already been accelerating the focus on gender equality on boards. Through our recent analysis, for over 600 companies, including data from 2019 to 2021, we see that although France has the highest mean percentage of females on the Board of Directors, Italy has been increasing their female representation much faster than their other European counterparts.

In addition to the average percentage of females on board, Italy has also seen an aggressive trend in the percentage of organizations above the proposed 40% minimum. Although, as we saw earlier France is still leading the way in terms of overall percentage of organizations above the minimum.

Clarity AI believes that diversity is imperative to success in the contemporary business world. Companies can help to ensure different kinds of diversity filter down through their ranks by starting at the top with their Boards.