WOMEN ON CORPORATE BOARDS IN THE REPUBLIC OF CROATIA IN THE CONTEXT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION DIRECTIVES AND NATIONAL POLICIES

Gender equality is a very important topic in todays business world that involves the prevention of discrimination and different protection measures for women promotion not only in activities of human resource management such as recruitment, working conditions, training and different benefits, but also in corporate management functions, at board and top level of management. Countries take different approaches in terms of institutional support and setting quotas to increase women presence at boards and top management of the corporations.Across Europe different policies and initiatives are undertaken to increase number of women on corporate boards. In 2011 the Croatian Parliament adopted the National Policy on Gender Equality This policy aims to create a gender balance of supervisory and management board members in the public and private sectors by ensuring that the share of the women to the Act on Gender Equality, does not fall below 40%. This Policy does not appear to be properly implemented in practice. Statistical data from 2017 shows that share of women on boards of the leading Croatian companies is 17.3%, according to the CROBEX Index which measures the share of women in management positions in the most important companies on the Zagreb Stock Exchange. In 2017 share of women in corporate boards decrease comparing with 2015 and 2016 when it was above 20%. According to the latest available data from the European Commission in April 2016, women are most numerous on corporate boards in France (37.1%), Sweden (36.1%),Italy (30.0%) and Finland (29.8%). The aim of the paper is to analyse position of women on corporate boards in the Republic of Croatia and do the comparison among Croatia and other EU countries with the critical approach to the analysis of secondary data, European Union directives and national policies.