4.1 Introduction

This study addresses the subjects of gender diversity and gender equality in corporate boards of listed companies in the Netherlands. We analyze these subjects from an economic decision-making perspective and a legal and human rights perspective (a rights-based perspective).

Female participation in corporate boards traditionally attracts academic attention from these two different perspectives. On the one hand, the economic or managerial perspective, which focuses on better decision-making capabilities of gender-diverse teams and increased economic performance, and on the other hand, the gender equality perspective, which focuses on compliance with international human rights treaties and national laws stipulating gender equality in all levels of society.1

This two-pronged approach is presented as follows: on the basis of a literature study and desk research, we first set out the views discussed in the extant literature on the economic perspective and, next, the legal context applicable to the rights-based perspective. Subsequently, we test how Dutch listed companies deal with these two perspectives in practice by analyzing unique empirical data collected from listed companies in the Netherlands.

We collected the data in two studies assigned by the Dutch Corporate Governance Code Monitoring Committee (the Committee) to us in 2014 and 2015 in the context of their monitoring task; i.e. the Committee annually assesses the compliance by Dutch listed companies with the Code.2 The Code applies on a comply or explain basis. One of the areas of specific concern of the Committee was the topic of diversity in corporate boards as, since 2008, the Code requires that companies have a policy to realize a diverse composition of the supervisory board, gender being one of the indicators (this will be set out in Section 4.3.3).3

We discovered that the two perspectives (i.e. the economic and the rights-based perspectives) are often mixed up by stakeholders who deal with the theme of diversity in corporate boards. For instance, whereas the public call for increased gender diversity in top management teams is often motivated by economic arguments, e.g. that gender-diverse teams achieve better economic results, our research results revealed that listed companies often refer to legal target figure requirements when they set out their board diversity policies. That is: when reporting on their board diversity policies in the context of elaborating on their compliance with the Code, Dutch listed companies often referred to the DCC provisions concerning the target figure (see Section 4.3.3).4

The main research question in this chapter is how Dutch listed companies behave in regard of the two themes, board diversity and gender equality, thereby discussing the (mix-up in the) application of the Dutch (semi-)legal norms in this area. The two themes are visualized in Figure 4.1. We also have innovative findings to share regarding the measures taken by progressive Dutch listed companies in order to realize a diverse board composition. It appears that Dutch listed companies regard gender as an important diversity factor.

The chapter is structured as follows: in Section 4.2, we introduce the economic perspective by providing a review of international academic literature on this topic; in Section 4.3, we set out the institutional and Dutch legal context by discussing pertinent international human rights and European treaties as well as Dutch national law and regulation (the rights-based perspective); we elaborate on the methodology which we used in the two empirical studies performed for the Committee in Section 4.4, followed, in Section 4.5 by our analysis of the empirical data collected in these two studies. Finally, Section 4.6 comprises our concluding remarks.