Jan 20 (Reuters) - The proportion of women in leading
positions at major European companies rose last year, but fell
behind schedule to reach the European Commission's proposed
target of 40% for 2025, a study by an EU-sponsored non-profit
organisation showed on Thursday.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said
earlier this month she would try to unblock legislation for a
quota of women on EU company boards, which has been stuck since
2012.
The proposal calls for listed companies in the bloc to fill
at least 40% of non-executive board seats with women.
Female representation at board level rose by one percentage
point to 35% in 2021 after a similar rise a year earlier,
according to the study by Brussels-based association European
Women on Boards (EWOB), which analysed 668 top European listed
companies, included in the STOXX 600 index and national
benchmarks.
"At the current speed of change we will not be able to reach
40% women on boards by 2025," said Rosa Kriesche-Küderli, chair
of research and communication at EWOB.
Progress is also slow in top jobs: in the second year of the
pandemic, only 7% of the companies' chief executives were women,
according to the study, after a jump from 4.7% to 6% between
2019 and 2020.
The number of companies with high scores on EWOB's Gender
Diversity Index (GDI) rose to 84 from 62 in 2020.
It defines a high score as an index reading of 0.8 and
above, where zero means there are no women on the board or in
senior management positions and 1 is 50% representation.
Dutch chemicals company DSM led the rankings with
a score of 1, while British insurer Admiral showed the
strongest annual progress, jumping to 0.94 from 0.6.
France, Norway and Britain led the country ranking with a
GDI of about 0.7, while Greece, Luxembourg, Switzerland and
Poland were at the bottom of the table.
(Reporting by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez
Editing by Milla Nissi and Mark Potter)