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Gender-Balanced Leadership Quotas Are Coming – Are You Ready?

It’s no secret that women have, historically and still today, been underrepresented in leadership positions, in business and politics alike. Having unbalanced leadership teams – whether that’s in personality, abilities, experience or gender – can drastically undermine management capabilities and profitability. Are quotas the answer to breaking through the mental and/or traditional barriers leading to these imbalances? Are they the key to overall growth, for companies and entire industries? Obviously, this is a matter of much debate. However, several EU countries have decided that it’s a tactic worth trying. Quotas are coming. (Or are already here.) You will need to plan accordingly, and knowledge is a powerful planning tool.

Quotas in the Life Sciences

The life-sciences industry is also subject to quota implementations. Thankfully, we’ve already seen slight increases in diversity in the management teams of pharmaceutical, biotech and medical-device companies and CROs, but the implementation of quotas should help assure greater awareness of the (repercussions of) imbalance and increased focus on solving the situation. Whatever your personal feelings about this shift, you need to know how it will affect your company and the decisions you make about the future of your senior management team. You need to know what the rules and regulations are and will be in the country(-ies) where you have a presence.

Do you know yet which countries already have quotas, and which countries will soon? What the new regulations are precisely, per location? How these regulations are affected by company size? What the costs and benefits of meeting the quotas are? And what happens if you ignore them?

These are complicated questions, and their answers are not simple. But we have researched these questions extensively so that we could share what there is to know and what there is to think about with you.

Questions and Answers 

Our new report on gender quotas shares our findings. In it, you will find a breakdown of the rules and developments per country as well as EU-wide, plus an in-depth look at the history, context and lingering questions surrounding the gender-quota system. We also look at several gender quota success cases and the economics of growth through greater gender inclusion. We want you to have the information you need so that your life sciences company can diversify and thrive – now and in the future.

We hope that you already have diversity on your agenda, as it is not only a powerful tool for success but it can also be relatively easy to implement. We know as well as anyone that there are pitfalls, but we hope you believe in diverse teams, and their growth-inducing power, as much as we do. However, whether or not you believe in diversifying your staff, it is on the EU agenda and will likely become a more and more prominent issue over the coming years. Let us equip you with the details you need to know to plan your strategy accordingly. As always, we are ready to help move your pharma, biotech or CRO company forward in the right direction.

Consider this report our gift to you – it won’t even cost you an email address. To stay informed about developments affecting pharma recruitment and life-sciences leadership, you can sign up for our blog post updates here. To build a strategy for creating more diverse leadership teams tailored to your specific business, then visit the Seuss Executive services page and call +31 (0) 20 29 00 016.