Women in Spain moving from bulls to boardroom

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quarter of a century after women began running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain is battling to open up one of the last bastions of machismo: the boardroom.

The central bank's governor, Miguel ngel Fernandez Ordonez, last week made Ana Sanchez Trujillo the first woman appointed to the bank's board. The government in June drafted legislation requiring companies to fill 40 percent of their board seats with women within eight years. Women now hold about 4 percent of the directorships at Spain's largest companies.

"The bank thus starts to take the first steps toward overcoming this prejudice of masculine superiority that's so deep-rooted in Spain," Ordonez said during a Madrid ceremony marking the start of his term as governor.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is promoting equal rights for women throughout Spanish society, where a recent study of social attitudes found that just 13 percent of men share laundry chores with their wives. Increasing the number of women on corporate boards will make Spanish companies more competitive, said the country's minister for labor and social affairs, Jesus Caldera.

Norway last year went further than Spain, requiring that women occupy 40 percent of board seats by 2008.

Norwegian companies have a higher percentage of women on their boards than any country in Europe. Women hold 29 percent of the board seats in Norway, compared with an average of 8.5 percent, according to a survey of 300 large companies released last month by the European Professional Women's Network, based in Paris. Portugal was lowest, with no women on the boards surveyed, while Italy had 1.9 percent.

In the United States, about 15 percent of board seats at Fortune 500 companies are held by women, according to a survey by Catalyst, a research firm in New York that works on women's issues.

Women held almost 10 percent of the directorships at FTSE 100 companies in 2005, according to a study by the Cranfield University School of Management in Britain.

"Legislation and shareholders do lead to change," said Susan Vinnicombe, director of the Center for Business Leaders at Cranfield. "In Spain, they are so far behind they feel they need to kick-start the whole thing through legislation."

But there is resistance within corporate Spain. Francisco Javier Zapata, vice secretary of the board at Banco Popular Espanol, said that there was a shortage of women with the qualifications to serve on corporate boards. Banco Popular Espanol has no women on its 18- member board. "The issue is not one that should be resolved through regulation," Zapata said.

The government disagrees. "We're convinced there's a sufficient number of women with the merit and ability to achieve this participation in working life," Caldera said. The legislation is expected to pass early next year, the government's Institute of Women says.

Spain's drive to increase the number of women in the boardroom is part of a broader effort to update its corporate governance guidelines as an economic boom triggers overseas expansion and attracts international investors.

Zapatero is acting to change attitudes in a country where the gap between the national average gross salary and what women earn is 26 percent, according to government data.

Cristina Sanchez, who in 1996 became the first female Spanish bullfighter in modern history, said that she was still fighting the same battles as women in the boardroom. Sanchez, who retired in 1999 after suffering discrimination from her male colleagues, returned to the bullring last month. "Let's not deceive ourselves, things haven't changed that much," she said, referring to the macho attitudes in bullfighting.

Isabel Aguilera, the head of Google's Spanish unit and the only female on the 14-member board of Indra Sistemas, a computer- services company, said that Spain should not impose rules making companies name more women to boards. "When you enact change through regulation it tends to be less sustainable, so I prefer progress to be slower but more lasting," said Aguilera.