Ukraine’s parliament wants to oblige state-owned companies and banks to have at least 40 percent of seats on their corporate boards occupied by women, and private joint stock companies will be encouraged to follow suit.
A draft bill registered on Feb. 4 pushes for more balanced gender representation in supervisory and governing boards of banks and companies in which the state holds a stake of 50 percent or more shares.
The authors of a new bill are Olga Bielkova, a lawmaker with the 135-seat Bloc of Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction, and Victoria Ptashnyk, a lawmaker with 25-seat Samopomich faction. Both women said greater gender diversity at top corporate levels will help to improve the performance of companies.
“The real implementation of equal participation of women and men in the corporate governance of state-owned enterprises will give a new impetus to changes in the management of these companies,” Ptashnyk said.
If the law passes, Ukraine will join a club of Western countries – the United States, Iceland, Norway, Spain, Finland, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Austria, and Belgium – which have already introduced gender quotas on the boards of public and private companies. Their quotas range from 30 to 40 percent.
A number of studies by Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, ESG Research and other research institutions have found a direct correlation between a higher number of women on corporate boards and the improved financial performance of companies. More diverse groups in business are believed to be more creative and innovative and therefore make better decisions.
In Ukraine, however, the progress in promoting gender equality in the workplace has been slow.
The Kyiv Post looked at the executive and supervisory boards of 11 major state-owned companies in various sectors. All but two have one or two women or no women at all on their boards. Two state-owned banks – PrivatBank and Ukreximbank – have three women on the 9-member executive board. All 11 companies have male CEOs.
At the political level, too, women are a minority. Currently, there are only 49 female lawmakers in the Ukrainian parliament, against 374 men. In the government, women hold only six out of 25 of the top ministerial positions.
According to a 2016 study by Kyiv-based think tank Razumkov Center, in Ukraine, women traditionally dominate in a low- or medium-paid jobs such as social welfare, education, healthcare, and domestic services. Men, in contrast, prevail in highly paid industries such as transport, energy, construction, technology, and manufacturing.
The gender pay gap is another issue to be addressed. According to the government envoy for gender policy, Kateryna Levchenko, Ukrainian women earn 72-75 cents for every dollar a Ukrainian man is paid.
Last week, the Ukrainian government launched a social campaign for gender equality at the workplace, with the slogan “Everyone is equal in a profession.”
