What everyone forgets: This is the reason why there are so few women at the top

TU Eindhoven establishes a women's quota and the SER also states that all 88 listed companies must have at least 30% of their supervisory boards made up of women. women In the long term, this should even become 50%. A nice goal, of course. Women have a lot to correct.

It seems that we women are less boastful, thinking more about why we are not qualified for a job than the other way around (with men it would work the opposite way) and pulling all sorts of bears out of the woods to place them on the road. I do believe there is something to that, although I don't really recognize it in myself and my friends. Girls often perform better than boys in school and at university and are particularly efficient and have a great capacity for empathy, which can serve as lubricant in the business world. And we can certainly boast as well. I think I do quite well in the above paragraph, don't you?

So in my opinion, that is not the problem. The biggest problem is that damned childcare. It is expensive and scarce in the Netherlands. Moreover, the blame culture is still very much alive in the Netherlands. Women are so used to working only three or four days for the sake of the children that if you bring your children to daycare for five days (guilty), you quickly get a disapproving aiaiai from other mothers. In countries where childcare is both cheaper and better accepted (Italy 29%, Sweden 33.7%, Norway 35% compared to 18% in the Netherlands), the number of women in top positions is also significantly higher.

Another problem I experienced as a working mother with daycare is that they close at 6:30 PM. If you are late, you get a fine and a warning. The tricky part is that a top position often does not come with a 9:00 to 5:30 schedule. I have never experienced a glass ceiling, but as soon as you have to leave the board meeting to pick up the kids from daycare, you are immediately taken less seriously.

Daycares should therefore have more flexible hours. Now someone next to me suggests that the partner of the person in that top position could perhaps pick up the kids. But that implies that only one of the two can make a career. That the step up for one implies a step back for the other. I think many ambitious and hardworking women also have a partner who derives the same joy from their work.

So incredibly nice initiatives like those mentioned in the first paragraph, but alongside keeping that coveted seat free, I would also initiate a great, flexible, and affordable childcare. Or start a nanny service that facilitates care at home, even better. Just wait and see what happens then.

And now that we're at it; here find all the arguments why you don't have to feel guilty if you work full-time.