WOMEN should not have a quota of top jobs, a Yorkshire politician said last night.
Godfrey Bloom spoke out about European Union (EU) plans to force companies to ensure 40% of management posts are filled by women.
The Yorkshire Euro-MP said: “This is reverse discrimination and is an insult to all business women who have worked hard to attain their positions.
“It means that there will be suspicions that they are just token women, there because of an EU diktat and not because of their talent and endeavour.”
The United Kingdom Independence Party man spoke out last night after the European Parliament advised businesses to hire women to their executive boards by next year or face a mandatory quota of 30% by 2015 and 40% by 2020.
Women currently make up 10% of directors and 3% of chief executive officers in the EU’s largest companies – with the number of women on corporate boards increasing by around half a percentage point a year.
But Mr Bloom said: “Women make up a significantly higher proportion of senior jobs in the professions which on the whole, they seem to prefer.
“Is it really a fundamental right that women should take up 40% of top management roles?
“The whole thing is crazy. Men and women should get to the top because they are the best, not because of their gender”.
