EP Briefing: Gender balance on the boards of significant banks in the Banking Union

EGOV analysed publicly available information on the corporate governance structures to determine the gender balance on the boards of the banks in the euro area supervised by the ECB (“significant institutions”), comparing the situation in 2014 with that in 2020.

The general observation is that, overall, the share of female executive directors has risen in significant banks from 15.3% to 27.4% (see figure 1) and the share of female supervisory directors has increased from 22.3% to 31.7% (see figure 2, further down); these levels are still quite distant from an equal gender distribution. Moreover, the differences between the nature of board (executive versus supervisory boards) and between the type of bank (large versus small) have become smaller. Large banks are, for our purposes, those with assets exceeding EUR 100 bn. Large differences in the share of female directors persist, though, if the data is grouped at the country level.