The European Union’s Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, said that the bloc is moving closer to introducing mandatory quotas to increase the number of women on company boards.

In her announcement, Commissioner Reding said European businesses failed to make sufficient progress in gender equality over the past year.

At the current rate it would take more than 40 years for women to hold 40% of board positions in Europe’s publicly traded companies. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said that over the past 12 months, only 24 companies had signed a pledge to ensure that 30% of their board positions are held by women by 2015. By 2020, that figure should increase to 40%.

At the moment, only one in seven – or less than 14% of board members at Europe’s biggest companies are women, the Commission said. That’s up only slightly from just under 12% in 2010 and despite the fact that 60% of university graduates are now women.

The Commission says that the low presence of women in decision-making positions in big companies is not only a sign of gender inequality, but also hurts companies’ results. Reding said that firms with equal representation of women on their boards had 56% higher operating profit compared with companies with all-male boards.

Several EU states – including Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain – have already adopted gender quotas for companies. But the issue remains a special challenge for Malta. In recent figures, the EU’s statistical arm found that for the first time, Malta had hit the 40% participation rate for women in employment.

The government points out that for women under the age of 30, participation rates are as high as the rest of Europe, but it is clear that a lot more needs to be done. There are, of course, two arguments here. Some might argue that it has to come from board level to set an example, but others will argue that it is more important to get more Maltese women into the mainstream workforce before worrying about board positions.

But, it is Commissioner Reding, who has the best advice: “You also have to bring women in the pipeline,” Reding said, pointing to better childcare provision by the state and more equal division of responsibilities between parents.

She is absolutely right. With the onus on increased productivity and competitiveness, Malta would benefit by creating as many places of work as possible and subsequently filling them.

It is not easy, and it will not be without a challenge. But with more childcare facilities made available, then it can only help to entice more women into the world of work. From there, we can start to think about increasing participation both in mainstream jobs and on company boards. But we must also go one further. The government has worked hard to put women at the helm of public institutions, but if we were to look at our parliamentary composition, we would find that there are very few women involved. Perhaps this will all change after the next election, but as things stand at the moment, women are under-represented in the highest institution of the land.

These things do not change overnight, and while effort has been put in, still more needs to be done to bridge the gender gap.