Putting Women’s Rights to Work: The Participation of Women on Company Boards as a Human Rights Law Issue

Most of the legal scholarship on the participation of women on company boards focuses on European Union (EU) law and/or national law. In this chapter we take a novel approach by offering a critical reflection on the question to what extent international human rights law mandates the use of positive measures to improve the participation of women on company boards, and what obligations this entails on the state and on companies themselves.

We thereby use the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) Committee’s multi-layered conception of equality—consisting of formal, substantive and transformative equality—as framework to assess and critique human rights law.

This chapter shows that the proper implementation of CEDAW indeed requires States Parties adopt measures to tackle the underrepresentation of women in top corporate positions, though there is considerable discretion as to the content of these measures. Also under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) states should take an active stance towards the private sector on this topic. Responsibilities for companies are based on the UNGPs’ corporate responsibility to respect. We argue that promoting the participation of women on company boards falls into the scope of what is currently expected from companies.