Two studies out on Thursday show efforts to boost the number of women in upper layers of management at Dutch companies are not having much effect.

Research by management consultancy Berenschot shows just 5% of top level executives at companies listed on the AEX and MidKap indices are women and of them, two thirds come from abroad.
By contrast just one third of male bosses are not Dutch, the research shows. ‘It would appear to be difficult to attract Dutch women to board level functions,’ Berenschot said.
Targets
While the number of women in boardroom jobs has risen from 2% to 5% over the past five years, just nine of the 176 executives at the country’s biggest listed companies are female, the research showed.
Annual research by the Volkskrant into female managers at 35 ‘trend-setting’ companies puts the number of female managers at a sub-board level stable at 20%. This means it will be impossible to meet the government’s official 30% executive board target by 2016, the paper says.
Publishing group Reed Elsevier performs best – nearly half its management board is female.
Some 60% of Dutch women had a job of 12 hours a week or more last year, compared with 53% 10 years ago, according to the national statistics office CBS.
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