Commission-companion-full

GENDER BALANCE
Hitting targets
The European Commission’s gender
balance – or lack of it – had the
dubious honour of being the
controversy which cast a shadow over Jean­
Claude Juncker’s presidency even before the
Luxembourg politician had officially taken
office. Juncker had wanted to appoint at
least as many female commissioners as his
predecessor José Manuel Barroso, who
counted nine women among his 27
(subsequently 28) commissioners during his
second mandate (2009­14). Juncker was
even subjected to a ’10 or more’ campaign
– a social media meme featuring photos of
outgoing female commissioners holding
both hands up in a 10­finger salute.
It was not to be. In spite of a promise to
offer female commissioners’ more
prestigious portfolios, most member states
put forward male candidates and Juncker
was only able to match Barroso’s nine when
Poland eventually selected Elżbieta
Bieńkowska. Instead, Juncker set a more
ambitious – and perhaps more realistic –
target to improve female representation in
the ranks of the Commission’s middle and
senior management – in short, in the ranks
of the officials rather than those nominated
by politicians. As outlined in his mission
letter to Kristalina Georgieva, the
commissioner for budget and human
resources, Juncker had set the target of 40%
female representation for senior and middle
management staff in his term. The
Commission president also asked Georgieva
to “pay particular attention to gender
equality in the recruitment process and
throughout the career path”.
The Barroso II Commission had worked on
an ‘equal opportunity strategy’ from 2010­14
to increase the number of female staff for
three management areas in which women
were under­represented. By the end of 2014,
women were to make up 25% of senior
management posts, meaning that a third of
appointments to replace those leaving for
retirement should be women. Additionally,
Barroso wanted women to make up 30% of
middle­management and 43% of nonmanagement
administrator posts.
It was a concerted effort on the part of
the Commission which saw those targets
met in February 2014. Commission research
revealed that job flexibility was an
important factor in encouraging women civil
servants to take on greater responsibilities.
An attempt was also made to create a work
environment in which “men and women are
offered the best chances of contributing
fully to the success of the organisation”.
The latest figures show that almost 28% of
the Commission’s senior managers were
Commission staff by age and gender
AGE FEMALE
MALE
21 - 22 1 100.0%
23 - 24 4 66.7% 2 33,3%
24 - 26 25 61.0% 16 39.0%
27 - 28 83 62.4% 50 37.6%
29 - 30 194 70.5% 81 29.5%
31 - 32 342 66.7% 171 33.3%
33 - 34 637 65.5% 336 34.5%
35 - 36 958 64.5% 527 35.5%
37 - 38 1,016 62.5% 610 37.5%
39 - 40 930 57.1% 700 42.9%
41 - 42 865 57.7% 635 42.3%
43 - 44 879 54.6% 730 45.4%
45 - 46 959 53.8% 822 46.2%
47 - 48 965 51.8% 898 48.2%
49 - 50 895 50.5% 877 49.5%
51 - 52 864 49.9% 868 50.1%
53 - 54 816 46.8% 929 53.2%
55 - 56 667 43.6% 863 56.4%
57 - 58 547 41.0% 788 59.0%
59 - 60 389 38.2% 629 61.8%
61 - 62 243 37.3% 408 62.7%
63 - 64 141 35.3% 258 64.7%
65 - 66 12 31.6% 26 68.4%
67 - 68 1 100.0%
women, who also made up 30% of middle
management positions and 43% of nonmanagement
positions. All this adds up to
significant progress over the past 20 years:
in 1995 women made up a mere 4% of
senior management roles, 10% of middle
management positions and almost 24% of
non­management staff.
Yet Juncker is now aiming for more and
set the 40% target for all three management
categories. As things stand, of the 13,517
officials working at the Commission on 1
January, 42.2% are female.
Yet there is another staffing discrepancy
which may prove harder to address:
national representation. If broken down by
country of origin, the Commission’s staff is
not particularly representative, particularly
as staff regulations state clearly that
recruitment and appointments are to be
Source: European Commission
made on the “broadest possible
geographical basis” from nationals of all EU
member states. Recruitment is underpinned
by a complex formula, which takes into
account a country’s total population, its
number of seats in parliament and its
weight in the Council of Ministers.
The regulations also say that no post can
be set aside for nationals from a given
member state and that competence
relevant to the function should be the main
selection criterion. There was an exception
to this rule: the transition period after EU
enlargement, in which compulsory
recruitment targets were set and specific
posts could be reserved for the nationals
from new member­states in a bid to boost
their numbers. Croatia, which joined the EU
in 2013, was to benefit from this form of
positive discrimination until mid­2018.
54