The Netherlands ranks 28th in the annual ranking of equality between men and women in 146 countries. On the Global Gender Gap Index 2023 of the World Economic Forum, the Netherlands ranks directly below Mozambique, Australia and Chile. Neighboring countries Belgium and Germany are in the top 10, as are – traditionally – Sweden, Norway and Finland. Iceland leads for the fourteenth year in a row. In absolute terms, gender equality has improved slightly, but by only 1 percent compared to last year. Then the Netherlands also came in 28th place.
According to Henk Volberda, one of the researchers at the University of Amsterdam who collected the Dutch data for the study, the result is “disappointing”. “If Germany and Belgium are in the top 10, you wonder: why is the Netherlands so far behind?” According to him, the past three years have been “hopeful” for the Netherlands, which was still in 38th place in 2020 and then climbed up. “We hoped that trend would continue. The government has made small improvements on gender equality, but they dwarf the progress made in other countries.”
According to Volberda, the ‘pain point’ of the Netherlands in comparison with other countries lies mainly in the limited political influence and economic equality of opportunity for women. “The number of women in ministerial posts is going well, but in the House of Representatives and especially the Senate, men are still in the majority.” The political ranking also takes into account how many years a country has had a female leader – this has never happened in the Netherlands.
Women at the top
In particular, the number of women in senior positions in the Netherlands is well below the global average. Only 13.7 percent of Dutch companies have female top managers. “We see a proportional distribution in the workplace and in entry-level positions, but that is not reflected in managerial positions – not even in sectors where women are in the majority, such as education and healthcare.” The research shows that the recruitment of women in top positions declined last year.
In entry-level positions, the gender pay gap is not visible – in fact, women earn more on average – but it begins to appear when women reach the age of 30. “At that age, women on average have children and then it turns out to be difficult to combine care tasks and work,” says Volberda. “Apparently they are not shared enough with partners.” According to the Global Gender Gap Index, 77.7 percent of working women have a part-time job, compared to 45.6 percent of men.
The Netherlands ranks 134 out of 146 for life expectancy for women and therefore seems to score poorly, but according to Volberda that is misleading. “Actually, we are doing well in that area. Women live longer than men in the Netherlands, but that is also the case in many other countries,” he explains. “Because the gender gap in health care is almost completely closed, those numbers are very close together. But there are many countries where women live relatively much longer than men.” The figure that the Netherlands receives for health care is therefore high – 0.962, where a score of 1 is the highest achievable.
Reconsider
According to Volberda, the Dutch place in the ranking shows that the government “must reconsider emancipation policy.” He sees several possibilities for this. “In Norway, for example, there is a law that requires 40 percent of every board of directors of listed companies to be women. And in Iceland, men and women get parental leave for the same amount of time.” Free childcare would also help women’s labor force participation. At the end of April, the government announced that the much-discussed introduction of almost free childcare in the Netherlands has been postponed by two years to 2027.
In total, the gender gap in the Netherlands has been closed for 77.7 percent. The study estimates that if women’s emancipation continues at the same rate as it has for the past 17 years, women around the world will not achieve equality until the year 2154.
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