One third of seats on management boards and executive committees of Belgium’s state-owned companies will have to be held by women under new rules agreed by the federal government this week.
The decision, reported by Belgian news agency Belga, builds on earlier reforms and follows weeks of negotiations after the government failed to reach consensus on earlier proposals to set a higher quota and extend the rules to large private companies.
Equality Minister from the socialist Flemish party Vooruit, Rob Beenders, said that state-owned companies would have to comply “in the short term,” according to Flemish media VRT.
The government, led by Flemish, right-wing politician Bart De Wever, did not give a specific timeline for implementation.
In 2011, Belgium was one of the first countries in the world to introduce a 33% legal gender quota on the board of directors. At the time, fewer than 10% of board members were women, while in 2025, that figure is 37%.
Over the same period, the number of boards without a single woman fell from 62 to 2.
Beenders said quotas are a temporary measure to break long-standing barriers. In March, he proposed stricter rules, including a 40% quota and extending them to large private companies.
Those proposals, however, met resistance from coalition partners, who argued that quotas were too intrusive and that companies should be free to appoint leaders on merit.
(mm)