The board of the Confederation of Icelandic Employers (SA) announced that 46% of its board was comprised of women last year, RÚV reports.
If just one more woman joins the board the Confederation can boast gender parity for the first time. This development comes following provisions made by Alþingi in September 2011 that the organisation must maintain at least 40% female representation on its board. The same provision was demanded of the Icelandic Pension Funds Association, however this goal has yet to be achieved and the Association has requested more time to meet the gender target, which has a deadline of September 2013.
Steingrímur J. Sigfússon, Minister of Industries and Innovation, does not believe it is necessary to provide the pension funds with more time to achieve this goal than has already been granted. “The answer is simple. No. I see no reason to provide a longer transitional period. The proposal was made and they [the pension funds] have been encouraged for the past year and a half or two years to prepare for this, so I don’t think they should be having any problems meeting the goal. Such large and strong pension funds should be able to deal with this,” he said.
In September 2011 Alþingi set guidelines for the gender ratios of the boards of pension funds. For all boards in excess of 3 persons 40% of members must be women.
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