Will the glass ceiling in women’s careers finally be shattered?

13.10.2025

Women in management and supervisory boards are few and far between. By default, the position of President is still a position held by a man. Not a female President.

The European Union has decided to change this and introduce an obligation to ensure gender diversity in the management of the largest listed companies.

Critics of quotas immediately cry out: women on boards will be just incompetent tokens! Let competence decide, not gender.

Will the „women on boards” regulations really cause women to oust men from boards? Will competence and experience cease to matter?

What are the changes about?

The goal of the changes is one: management and supervisory boards are to be gender-diverse. In teams where there are only men, women are to appear. This does not have to be a 50/50 ratio. One gender may still prevail. As part of the changes, a minimum threshold for gender representation is to be established. So as to re-introduce a team: women + men.

Who will be covered by these changes?

At this point, only the largest listed companies that have their registered office in the Republic of Poland and have at least one share admitted to trading on a regulated market in at least one Member State will be subject to change. That is how the complicated definition sounds.

In practice and simplified terms, the changes apply only to the biggest market players.

Smaller companies do not have to ensure diversity for now. However, let us remember that the image of a seven-member all-male board repels employees. And even if the regulations do not provide a „stick” for DEI, a monolithic image is, to say the least, passé.

What will companies have to do?

We have three steps to adapt to the women on boards directive.

Firstly, the company had to adopt a resolution defining a gender balance policy. That is, it will answer the question of how it intends to ensure diversity.

Secondly, the company will report how many male and female representatives it has on the management and supervisory boards. That is, it will state how many women and men are in the top management.

Thirdly, the company will have to indicate what measures it is taking to actually achieve gender balance on the management and supervisory boards.

There are many methods for ensuring gender balance. Let us point out the three most important ones: recruitment rules for candidates to management and supervisory boards, implementation of career development programs for women and men, and the introduction of a comprehensive HR strategy focused on ensuring gender balance in top roles.

The regulations here propose top-down solutions.

Companies are to publish policies related to ensuring gender equality on their websites. This is to be accompanied by instructions and an indication of specific regulations. Penalties for failure to perform duties related to the women on boards directive are also to be indicated.

The same applies to reports. They are to be published simply via the Internet. So that everyone can check whether a specific listed company is fulfilling the new obligations.

For failure to perform these duties, a company may pay a very high price, hence we expect real implementation of the new requirements.

Will men be discriminated against now?

The new regulations are not an attack by women on men. This is also not what gender equality in the workplace is about. The new regulations want to ensure representation of the other gender where there is a dominance of one. And this can apply to women as well as men.

And each person entering a management or supervisory board must, of course, be competent. So, to the question from the beginning of the article, we answer: there will be no incompetent tokens.

In the recruitment process, a female candidate will receive a handicap for employment only if she is rated as highly as her male colleagues. And only if there are both a woman and a man in the group of top candidates, then priority in employment is to concern the underrepresented gender. This is a handicap granted to women, but it does not apply unconditionally.

Moreover, this is to be monitored by companies in which the quota is currently not achieved.

Reversing the situation, if a male candidate performs better, simply has higher qualifications required by the company to perform given duties, the company may hire him. In this case, there is no obligation to grant priority to women.

The company is not obliged to hire a female candidate who is clearly inferior to her male competition, solely on the basis of gender.

How should companies recruit?

It is worth preparing now. Below are our three recruitment tips:

1. Verification of recruitment processes. Certainly, existing recruitment methods will need to be reformulated into those focused on achieving quotas.

2. Comparative assessment of candidates. It is worth doing it based on maximum objective criteria, e.g., in the form of individual scores and tables – the format should be agreed upon in advance.

3. The rules for selecting candidates should be transparent. Because the assessments, criteria, and justification for choosing or not choosing someone will have to be made available. If a candidate requests it.