Freya Van den Bossche is, by any defnition, a success. At 28, she is Belgium’s Minister of Environment, Sustainable Development and Consumer Affairs — the youngest cabinet minister in the country’s history, with a portfolio that includes food safety and protecting children online. She’s smart, self-aware and, at almost any hour of the day, hard at work. So it’s no surprise that she rolls her eyes at old-fashioned notions of sexism and government-mandated gender equality in politics and business. “If you simply choose the best people for the job every time, you’ll eventually get parity,” she says.
Yet Van den Bossche’s success is due, at least in part, to quota laws enacted in Belgium in 1999. She won her first election in 2000, becoming an alderwoman in Ghent, without the help of legislation. But by the time she ran for national parliament as a
Flemish Socialist candidate in 2003, the law required that both sexes be represented in the top three slots on every party list — so her name was placed in a vote-getting position no novice male would have enjoyed. And part of her popularity, it must be said, has to do with her bright blue eyes and throaty voice. Van den Bossche regularly pops up on “sexiest Belgians” lists. “Some people assume I’m here because of my looks or because of parity laws,” she says. “My job is to prove them wrong. Maybe these factors have helped, but I hope that in four years, people will be talking about my policies.”
The quotas that helped Van den Bossche get ahead may be an inelegant and controversial solution, but they have worked — the percentage of women in Belgium’s lower house of parliament has risen from 23% in 1999 to 35% in 2003. And though some European countries lag shamefully — France, Italy and Greece have an average of just 10% women in parliament, trailing 13 developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa — across the European Union as a whole, women now hold 26% of elected seats versus 14% in the U.S. That comfortably fits Europe’s sense of itself as a progressive, liberal place.
But that feminist self-image takes a beating when it comes to women’s participation in business and management. Women make up barely one-third of all senior managers, public officials and civil servants in most European Union countries, compared to nearly half in the U.S. The business magazines love to profile rock-star female CEOs — but they all seem to be American. That’s why some European governments are trying to extend gender quotas to company boardrooms — something business leaders are fighting hard. And the legislative attempts to stamp out gender inequality don’t stop there. One European Commissioner has put forward a stunning initiative to limit sexist imagery in the media and remove gender from insurance calculations. But the remaining barriers to equality may not be so easily brought down.
Being a successful career woman in Europe today — like everywhere else on the planet — is fraught with difficulties, and some think the challenges lead many women simply to opt out. Some women deliberately choose 40-hour weeks over 80-hour weeks. They set their own ceilings by taking time off to raise children or going part time. As a single mother, Van den Bossche wakes before 6 a.m. to read reports and write e-mails, so she can have breakfast with her 4-year-old daughter and then take her to school. She gets nasty looks from colleagues when she declines evening meetings. But not even Van den Bossche is sure full gender parity is achievable. “Maybe we shouldn’t shoot for a situation where 50% of CEOs are women,” she says. “Many women are happy to stay at home or have a comfortable, normal job.” Lurking behind her observation is a question: Is this a battle the state should — still — be waging? And can any legal maneuvering make a difference to the way women are treated in politics, business and the media?
Politics: The Trouble with Quotas
In France, gender quotas for political parties have been in place since 2000. Most elections are based on proportional representation, so party lists must include an equal number of female and male candidates. But after the 2002 National Assembly elections, women held only 12.3% of seats — a mere 1.4% increase over the 1997 elections. The largest political parties chose to accept fines rather than fill half their lists with women. And some French women say they understand why. Equality “shouldn’t be imposed, it should be logical,” says Marguerite Capelle, a student at the lite Paris university, Institute of Political Studies. “The law is not going to change the minds of people.”
