The European Commission has hinted that it may introduce quotas to boost the number of women at board level at the same time as a report indicated that the employment gap for ethnic minorities is only set to widen.

 
The Commission has just unveiled a new five year strategy in a bid to tackle gender inequality, which focuses on five key priorities – ensuring more women enter the job market; equality in senior positions; promoting female entrepreneurship; equal pay as women earn on average 18% less than male counterparts and tackling gender-based violence.
 
But speaking at the launch of the strategy in Brussels, EU Justice Minister Viviane Reding implied that legislation could be necessary to force large public companies to address the lack of women in board rooms.
 
“I have not been an advocate of quotas for women in senior business posts in the past, but given the lack of progress in this area, we might in the future have to consider taking initiatives at the European level,” she said.
 
As a result, Reding plans to meet with chief executives of big publicly-listed European companies in spring next year to discuss the situation and to see whether there was scope for “determined self-regulation”.
 
“Depending on the outcome of this dialogue with industry, I will consider whether or not further initiatives will be necessary in 2012,” she added.
 
An annual ‘gender equality dialogue’ will assess the implementation of the strategy and will include stakeholders from EU institutions, European social partnerships and civil society.
 
A report entitled ‘The Race to the Future’ published by Business in the Community’s Race for Opportunity campaigners, meanwhile, indicated that the make-up of the UK population would change markedly over the coming years, with one out of five Britons being members of an ethnic minority by 2051.
 
But a widening employment gap would also see their proportionate share of available jobs falling. While Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) individuals made up 7.3% of the total population in 2000 and 10.3% by the end of 2007, they comprised only 5.4% and 8.5% of the working population respectively during those periods.
 
But Sandra Kerr, national director of Race for Opportunity warned that the challenge of ensuring that employment opportunities were open to all would get harder over the next 15 years, not helped by the “harsh economic environment for the private sector and the imminent cuts in public spending”.
 
Nonetheless, the report argued that workplace inclusion and diversity made “basic business sense”. “The gains are broadly shared between the ability to tap a larger potential talent pool for employers and the potential for reaching out to a wider customer base,” it said. “As organisations bring a more diverse group of people into their workforce, they are likely to bring benefit in terms of the different skills and greater understanding that brings.”