"Historic increase" in women in top jobs at Dutch companies

The number of women in top positions at the organizations that signed the Talent to the Top charter showed an "historic increase" last year, the organization announced. Last year 26.7 percent of the top jobs at these 275 companies were filled by women, compared to 24.6 percent in 2018.

At the end of 2019, 54.6 percent of the companies' boards of directors and 66.7 percent of the supervisory boards had a balance between men and women. On average, the chartered companies had 31.4 percent women in their boards of directors and 36.6 percent women in their supervisory boards - the second year in a row that these companies achieved the legal target of 30 percent women in tob jobs, on average.

"The organizations within the Talent to the Top network are at the forefront of diversity. These are very good results, the charter companies once again reached the legal target of 30 percent women at the top. That is an exceptional achievement that is unmatched nationwide," said Caroline Princen, chairman of the Talent to the Top monitoring committee.

The organization singled out five companies for doing particularly well in the field of male-female diversity - VodafoneZiggo, Arcadis Nederland, Rabobank, Aon, and Vanderkruijs.

About 36 percent of managerial roles at Arcadis are filled by women, director Gert Kroon said to news wire ANP. "That did not happen automatically," he said. Arcadis set clear goals and linked measures to them. For example, every vacancy must have female candidates, otherwise that vacancy will not be filled.

VodafoneZiggo's head of human resources Thomas Mulder said that 30 percent of its directors are women, compared to 25 percent two years ago. The telecom provider also said that it set specific goals and measures to achieve them. For example, teams that have less than 30 percent women must hire at least one woman every year, Mulder said to the news wire.