Gender Diversity on Corporate Boards in the Netherlands: Waiting on the World to Change

Abstract

In the Netherlands, increasing the number of women on corporate boards is considered to be, first and foremost, the responsibility of companies themselves and the Dutch legislator has so far been hesitant in introducing binding gender quotas for companies. However, in January 2013 the legislator introduced gender quotas (30%) for the corporate boards of ‘larger companies’ given the low number of women on corporate boards. These quotas were of a ‘soft’ nature since no strict sanctions would be applied if a company failed to comply with the said target. The law was also temporary in nature and expired automatically on 1 January 2016 because of the legislator’s expectations that the quotas would no longer be necessary after 2016. A proposal has been submitted to Parliament to prolong the aforementioned law for another four years. However, this proposal does not provide for any real sanctions for non-compliance with the quotas introduced. The Second and First Chamber of Parliament adopted this proposal without any further discussion on January 19, 2017 and February 7, 2017, respectively.