Belgium’s federal government has approved plans to introduce gender quotas for the executive committees of autonomous state-owned companies,

including bpost, NMBS, Proximus, and Infrabel.

For the first time, the regulation will extend beyond boards of directors to cover executive teams, requiring at least 33 percent of members to be women.

A precise implementation timeline has not been set, but Equal Opportunities Minister Rob Beenders (Vooruit) said companies will be expected to comply “in the short term.”

The impact will vary across firms. At bpost, recently rebranded as Bnode, only two of the ten executive directors are women, signaling a need for changes. NMBS, by contrast, already meets the quota, with three women on its nine-member executive team.

Belgium has long had gender quotas for boards of directors, which have significantly increased female representation. Government figures show the share of women on boards has risen from less than 10 percent in 2008 to over 37 percent today.

Beenders described quotas as a temporary tool to break entrenched barriers. He initially proposed a stricter 40 percent threshold and extending quotas to large private companies, but coalition partners resisted, arguing that such rules were too intrusive and that leadership should be determined on merit. The government ultimately agreed on a lower threshold, limited to state-owned enterprises.

The draft legislation will now be submitted to the Council of State and other advisory bodies before moving to parliament for approval. Photo by Phil Whitehouse, Wikimedia commons.