Legal quota will not get women to the top

Many Dutch women choose to work part-time and do not want a top job, Barbara Baarsma says in response to the Quota Manifesto that was sent to the Dutch parliament this week.

Just when you thought it had gone away for good, there it is again: the call for a legal quota for women at the top. According to the Quota Manifesto, businesses and public organisations should be required to ensure that women make up 40 percent of their supervisory and advisory boards. This desire has been expressed in the past by the Labour party (PvdA) and by the Dutch Trade Union Federation (FNV).

A legal quota for women at the top is the height of paternalism and does not produce top women professionals. Many Dutch women work part-time, and neither free childcare, a ‘Women to the top’ taskforce or a ‘Part-time plus’ taskforce – will get them to switch to working full time. The fact that any society is only perfectible to a limited degree emerges here once again.

Few hours

Working full-time is one of the requirements for getting a job at the top. The figures speak for themselves. The Netherlands is in third place in the EU with regard to women's labour participation: 7 in 10 women between the ages of 15 and 65 perform paid work.

But the Netherlands is also at a lonely height when it comes to women with a part-time function. Of the Dutch women who work, 3 in 4 work part-time, compared to 3 out of 10 women in the EU as a whole. It also emerges that the part-time jobs held by Dutch women often involve few hours indeed: 25 hours per week on average compared to almost 35 hours in the EU as a whole.

The Eurostat study published last year, which indicated that 'only' a quarter of Dutch managers are women compared to a figure of one third on average in the rest of Europe shows in fact that Dutch women are doing comparatively well. The Emancipation Monitor 2008 showed that there is hardly any difference between full-time employed Dutch men and women when it comes to the percentage in managerial functions.

In other words, the upper echelons in the Netherlands are an excellent reflection of the participation in full-time jobs.

Glass ceiling?

If women do not want to work full-time, that is their own individual choice. It only becomes a problem if they would like to work full-time but there is a barrier - a 'glass ceiling' - preventing them from doing so. Research from the Social and Cultural Planning Office from 2008 shows that cultural beliefs dictate that the ideal working week for women with children is about 20 hours.

If there even is a glass ceiling, it stretches over society, not companies. Influencing people's preferences by means of fiscal incentives to work – rather than giving credits to partners who stay at home – is preferable to a patronising policy like a legal quota. Time is also needed. Women have only been working in management and other senior positions in large numbers for a relatively short time. It will take some time before they advance upwards onto supervisory and advisory boards.

The discussion on women at the top has become a paragon of political correctness. Any company that wants to show off its social responsibility is buckling down to address the issue. That is all well and good if it results in equal opportunities for people with equal talents and availability, but not if it results in positive discrimination. In that case the road does not lead to the top but to the status of token woman: "Are you here because you're a woman or because you're good?"

Companies that value diversity should work on improving the flexibility of working hours, not a quota for the top. Dividing the work week into 7 days and evenings in dialogue with employees makes full-time work possible without negatively affecting existing preferences with regard to combining work and family responsibilities.