The European Union cannot be taken seriously as a promoter of gender equality until it gets its own house in order, according to European Commission Vice President Kristalina Georgieva, who is pushing for more women in powerful management positions.
Despite increasing number of women in top positions, Georgieva, the commissioner in charge of budget and human resources, told POLITICO that more needs to be done.
To meet a self-imposed goal of filling 40 percent of top- and middle-management positions with women by the end of 2019, Georgieva is concentrating her efforts on heads of unit, described on the Commission’s website as “the backbone” of the institution.
“If we are to meet the 40 percent target there, every year we have to go up by 2 percent and that is where we will have to pay more attention,” she said.
The European Commission has 1,125 heads of unit, of which less than a third — 368 — are women. In the past two years, however, 16 women joined the ranks of heads of unit, according to figures released by Georgieva’s office Monday, the day before International Women’s Day.
However, women in middle-management positions often struggle to move up the ladder, and the Commission needs to “work from the bottom (up).”
“We have to seek more women to step into the pipeline, to get more women up … You make better decisions when you have a more diverse working place.”
About 30 percent of senior management roles in the Commission are held by women — and changing the situation is one of the main targets of the human resources department. Of the 34 directors-general — the highest rank in the Commission bar the commissioners themselves — nine are women. The situation is better in the commissioners’ private offices, with women making up 42 percent of heads and deputy heads of cabinet.
“The 40 percent target is not yet equality,” Georgieva said. “It is a target we take very seriously because gender is good economics if we want highly performing institutions and to inspire the rest of the Union.”
Gender equality has been an issue for the Commission since Jean-Claude Juncker began assembling his team of commissioners. He pleaded with member countries to put forward women, but precious few of them did.
In the end Juncker’s team has 9 women out of 28 (from Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Sweden), one fewer than in the second Commission team of Juncker’s predecessor, José Manuel Barroso.
There are two female vice presidents in Juncker’s team — Georgieva and Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief.
Corporate crackdown
In November 2012, Viviane Reding — then commissioner, now MEP — proposed forcing European companies to have 40 percent of women on their supervisory boards by 2018. It was a tough ask: In 2013, women represented just 17.6 percent of non-executive board members at the EU’s largest companies.
Georgieva said the Commission would step up its efforts to have more women in top Commission jobs because “not only is this where we are in relative terms weakest, but also because it has very strong signaling value” to the outside world.
She pointed out the rise in the number of women in deputy director-general positions, which has quadrupled in recent years. “From three we jumped to 12,” she said. “The rule we apply of course is merits. But when we have two equally qualified candidates, then in this case we would select the woman.”
Georgieva said there were now many more female staff at the Commission than decades ago, when “managers believed that it was not for women to take on administrative functions because that would include travel, and therefore it was not appropriate for women.”
Those days are gone, she said, adding that the Commission has introduced flexible working arrangements and telework, as well as more spaces in kindergartens and EU schools.
“It used to be that if you want to telework, you have to convince your manager that you should do telework,” she said. “Now we flipped this around. The manager has to prove that your job is such that you cannot telework. The burden of proof is now on management.”
The promotion of women is also part of the Commission’s strategy to make the institution more diverse, Georgieva said. But she acknowledged that the EU institutions still do not reflect the diversity of Europe.
“You need to see that we look like Europe,” she said.
This article was updated to correct the number of female commissioners.
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