Amsterdam's Zuidas still male dominated; Little progress in women in business leadership

Despite an ample supply of candidates, leading law and accountancy firms still struggle to get women into the top of their organizations. Few women make it to partner, and men are still most often chosen to lead on the board, Financieele Dagblad reports after surveying 16 prominent firms in Amsterdam’s Zuidas.

The firms FD surveyed fall under the Integration Quota Act, which obliges the 5,000 largest companies to publicly report their male-female ratio in the top and sub-top of their company. The Social and Economic Council (SER) set up an online Diversity Portal for this purpose. The goal is at least 30 percent women at the top, though the SER aims for a 50-50 split.

The FD counted 1,676 partners in the 16 surveyed firms. Only 360 of them are women. According to the newspaper, these firms have leading clients like the government, listed companies, and wealthy business people.

Only five firms have achieved the 30 percent female partners target. According to scientific consensus, 30 percent is an important tipping point for culture change in the workplace. Four years ago, when FD did this same survey, four firms had achieved the target. So there’s been little progress.

FD added that all but two firms - KPMG and Allen & Overy - have made “some progress” in appointing female partners since the 2019 survey.

KPMG, which has been led by a female CEO for years, saw the share of women in the partner group fall from 14 percent in 2019 to 12 percent this year. According to FD, the shrinkage is particularly striking because the group grew from 148 to 169 partners in that period, meaning it had room to appoint women in new positions.

At Allen & Overy, the percentage of female partners fell by 4 percent. But the firm is still in the top five on the list of gender equality with 31 percent female partners. The other four firms that achieved the target are Pels Rijcken, Kennedy Van der Laan, Van Doorne, and Baker & McKenzie.

According to FD, the diversity experts who viewed the survey results were disappointed but not very surprised that little progress has been booked. According to them, this is because the firms work with the more non-committal targets instead of hard quotas stating how many top positions should be held by women.