I confess: I have a love-hate relationship with the issue of quotas…
The theme is not peaceful. There are those who are upfront against quotas, there are those who defend them strenuously.
Let us frame this issue: quotas appear as a possible solution to combat gender discrimination.
The situation seems to cause some discomfort in society. Discomfort in women, because the overwhelming majority understand that they do not need quotas because they do not feel fragile, weak, incapable or diminished. Discomfort in men because the overwhelming majority understand that women do not need quotas, because they do not feel fragile, weak, incapable or diminished. Apparently, so it will be.
The inequality, however, is evident.
Despite the constitutional ban on gender discrimination, wage inequality still exists. There is an 18% difference between what men and women earn. A woman has to work 59 more days a year to earn the same salary as a man in equal work.
Women are the majority of the working population that receives the minimum wage and the majority of the working population that is precarious. At a time when so many calls for an increase in birth rates are being made, they are those who, when they are pregnant, have their term contract not renewed.
Women still do not have a significant seat on the boards of directors and top management positions in medium and large companies; women, even though they earn the same salary as men to perform the same functions, have, in the vast majority of cases, access to fewer benefits related to this salary, directly related to the functions they perform (by way of example, highlight if the lower values of the so-called function allowances).
Women continue to have a weak representation in the Assembly of the Republic and in political decision-making centers.
The overwhelming majority of women continue to feel the burden of domestic work and care for their children and family, accumulating these family obligations with the demands of their professional careers; women continue to be questioned by potential employers and effective employers about whether they think about getting pregnant and having children, as if this option were an impediment to an adequate and efficient professional performance.
Equal opportunities and treatment, equality in the free choice of having a family, without remuneration and/or professional career progression penalties, this equality does not effectively exist yet. And it is a pity that this is so, because we are all to lose. But let's get back to the question of "quotas".
Law 3/2006, of 21 August, the so-called Parity Law, establishes that the lists of candidacies submitted to the Assembly of the Republic, the European Parliament and local authorities are composed in order to promote parity between men and women. women, being understood by parity the minimum representation of 33,3% of each one of the sexes in the lists. Mind you, it's not true equality, it's parity.
Over 41 years of democracy, in 25 governments, we had 14 male prime ministers in Portugal and a single prime minister, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, we have a ratio from 31 female ministers to 467 male ministers, 1609 males and 127 females were appointed. In other words, 92,7% of the governors we had are men and 7,3% women. Symptomatic…
With the Parity Law, the situation is gradually changing, through legal imposition. It has been shown that the quality of analysis and decision improves if it is shared by women and men.
Let me be clear: “quotas” are not for placing incompetent women in certain positions or functions; quotas exist so that competent women, who are not placed in the same functions or positions because of discrimination, are.
And the argument that quotas shouldn't exist because people should be there on merit doesn't hold. It is like saying that all the people in politics are there on merit, and we all know that this is completely false in the case of men.
I leave here a note of comparative law - in 2003, Norway was the first country to pass a law that obliges companies to comply with the gender balance in their boards of directors, at least 40%, for the less represented sex, under penalty of severe sanctions, including disqualification.
And what motivated the then Christian Democratic government to pass such a law was the fact that it was absolutely convinced that the insufficient use of the skills of highly qualified women represented a serious loss of economic growth potential and that the imbalance between the Gender on boards represented a missed opportunity for companies, both in terms of governance and financial performance.
More than 10 years later, the percentage of women in management positions in Norway rose from 7% to 43% and according to a study by Norwegian School of Economics, more parity in senior management resulted in more profitable companies, with a clear relationship between gender heterogeneity in leadership and increased sales.
Another proven correlation is that more women in management positions add value to the company itself, which thus increases its academic level and diversifies its talents, since, as is known, women are nowadays the majority of the graduate population, with more post-graduate, master's, doctoral, post-doctoral or MBA degrees.
The Norwegian experience has led, in Belgium, France, Iceland and, very recently, in Germany, which after 14 years of appealing to the willingness of German companies to make management positions more equal, has just passed a law that, already as of 2016, it requires women to represent at least 30% of the non-executive members of each supervisory body of listed companies.
And, to ensure that there will be no deviations from the objective to be achieved, the sanction provided for non-compliance with the law is not the payment of fines, but rather the obligation to keep the positions vacant until women with the profile and skills appropriate to their fill.
Since, in 2010, the European Commission has challenged Member States to reach a broad consensus on the urgency of increasing the participation of women on corporate boards, putting the lack of parity in management positions on the European political agenda, there was an increase of 8% on average in the proportion of women in the management of companies in the Member States. The countries with the greatest increase are those where mandatory legal measures were approved.
In Portugal, as a celebration of International Women's Day, the Council of Ministers Resolution No. 11-A/2015, of March 6, was approved, which establishes a period of 90 days to take steps towards the celebration, with listed companies, from a voluntary commitment to the goal of achieving 30% representation of the under-represented sex in management positions by the end of 2018 (?!?!).
I confess: I have a love-hate relationship with the issue of quotas…
What I uncompromisingly defend is that meritocracy and competence are always the only criteria for filling decision-making positions.
But, for all the above and because we know that social and mental evolution is much slower than the demands of the challenges we face, I believe that the introduction of mandatory, transitory legal measures, requiring the fulfillment of "quotas" in order to guarantee gender balance in both political and business life, forcing parties, citizens' movements and companies to look for candidates that best match the professional profiles and skills required outside the “usual gentlemen's club”, is the fastest and most efficient way to strengthen democracy, deepen citizenship, promote sustainable economic development and consolidate a fairer and more solidary society.
Author: Inês Morais Pereira
Lawyer and Doctoral Student in Innovation and Territory Management, Faculty of Economics, University of Algarve
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