The Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) alongside 34 other stock exchanges all over the world will organize an official opening of the trading session - 'Ring the bell for Gender Equality' on March 8 - International Women's Day.

The event is organized under the patronage of United Nations Women, UN Global Compact, UN Sustainable Stock Exchanges, the International Finance Corporation, the World Federation of Exchanges as well as Women in ETFs.

“Women’s economic empowerment is a key driver of sustainable development and a key corporate sustainability issue. The private sector increasingly recognizes that advancing gender equality throughout business operations and value chains means better talent, higher productivity, more customers, and a stronger bottom line. More businesses are successfully changing their practices, developing public-private partnerships, and investing resources to achieving gender equality and better bottom-line results,” according to BVB.

However, statistics show that Romania ranks among the last in Europe when it comes to the percentage of women on the boards of the top listed companies. Only 12% of the board members of the top 10 listed companies on the Bucharest Stock Exchange were women in 2014, compared to a 20% EU average. Iceland had the highest percentage of women on listed companies’ boards, 45%, followed by Norway (38%), France and Latvia (32% each).

The percentage of women on the boards of all listed companies on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (79 companies) was 14% in 2014, down from 19% in 2011. Moreover, only 48% of the listed companies had at least one woman on their boards, down from 61% in 2011, according to a report by Deloitte and Professional Women’s Network – PWN Romania published last year.

Only four of the 79 companies that were listed on the main market of the Bucharest Stock Exchange in 2014 had their boards run by chairwomen. The presence of women in executive positions was higher, however, with 8 women CEOs and over a quarter (27%) of the executive positions in listed companies held by women.

Gender equality remains a big issue in Romania, where the employment rate for men is higher than for women although there are about 45% more women university graduates than men. In 2014, the ratio between women and men employees in Romania was 74%, down from close to 80% in 2004. In the EU, the ratio went up from 78% in 2004 to 83% in 2014, according to Eurostat data.

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Andrei Chirileasa, andrei@romania-insider.com