Early to Act, Late to Achieve: Poor Implementation Limits Transformative Change in Spain

Spain developed a mixed approach to gender equality on corporate boards by combining measures in the corporate governance code from 2006 to a law regulating a minimum presence of 40% for the underrepresented sex on the corporate boards of publicly traded firms and state-owned companies in 2007. The lax oversight of the implementation of statutory quotas and the continued opposition from the business sector have hindered the feminization of boards. As a result, Spain has remained an implementation laggard with only 27.4% of board seats occupied by women in 2020. The chapter argues that the contentious politics underpinning the mixed approach to corporate equality has been instrumental in preventing the effective implementation of Spain’s corporate gender quotas. Worse, it has also gradually weakened both the self-regulation code and the legislative framework over time. Policy learning and new empowering alliances have recently shown early signs of transformative change with increasing support for gender quotas among businesswomen who used to oppose state intervention.