Louise Gunning, who chairs the board of Amsterdam's Academic Medical Centre hospital (AMC). She talks about healthcare, demographic change, being an executive and women in top jobs. Only five percent of Dutch boards are chaired by women. By Wendy Braanker.

Louise Gunning smirks when asked whether Dutch women are just not ambitious enough. Only a quarter of managers in the Netherlands are female, and the fraction of women in top jobs is far smaller.

Ms Gunning does not think this has anything to do with ambition. "I don't believe that for a second. Dutch men are also not lacking in ambition."

Rare
It is a fact that it is rare to find women in top Dutch jobs. Agnes Jongerius from the FNV trades union federation thinks it is too rare. She has just launched an ambitious plan to increase the number of women managers and executives. She is pushing for companies to implement policies of positive discrimination.
Ms Gunning rejects the idea. "I've always been very much opposed to positive discrimination; because I don't just think it's important that we have more women at the top, but that they do a good job there."

She does, however, think that the flow of women to top posts is very slow. "It's good, in any event, that Agnes Jongerius has got the discussion going."

Ground to cover
The Netherlands lags behind many European countries in measures helping women to stay in their jobs or get back to work after having children. The Dutch government has over recent years taken steps to improve the provision of day nursery care. However, she argues that there is a lot of ground still to cover as far as short-term and long-term maternity leave is concerned. The government can play a role in solving the problems. "But I think it's more important the organisations deal with this themselves."

How does the AMC hospital manage? Ms Gunning says that, when she first joined the AMC board in 1997, a request came in from the paediatrics department. Half the assistants being trained were women and they had all become pregnant during their training. The board was asked to come up with a solution. "I said, no, it's not our job, and I insisted they sort out the problem themselves."

Ms Gunning explains that departments, and also companies, can sort these matters out and make their organisations flexible so as to attract the best women. "Paediatrics managed to do this."

She says all the other departments at the hospital followed their example. "Those who were the first to sort out their organisation were the first to attract the best talent."

Ms Gunning herself worked part-time when her children were small. It did not hold her career back, nor stop her from eventually reaching the top. "I was lucky to have children while I was young. That was during a stage in my career when it wasn't a real disadvantage." Women need practical solutions if they are to combine motherhood with a career.

She says that the provision of day nursery care is far better now than in the past. "It's just a shame that prices have risen with the improvements. However, that stands to reason."

More children
Ms Gunning rejects an idea popular with some politicians that the birth-rate has to rise to combat a shrinking workforce and a burgeoning number of Dutch pensioners in the near future. "The problem of demographic change is in part due to the baby boom which followed the Second World War. Better healthcare meant more of these babies survived. Then, in the 1970s, far fewer children were born and this created an imbalance. The very worse thing you can do is to repeat what created the problem in the first place," she says.

She argues that the best thing we can do is sit it out and wait for the situation to rectify itself and stabilise.

She does not actually see the problem of demographic change as so acute. We are dying later, but we are also staying healthy for longer. "The length of time people need medical attention is not actually getting much longer. It's just getting put off till later in life."

And she contends that this means that healthcare costs are not going to get out of control. "We're actually paying healthcare premiums for longer because we're dying later."

However, Ms Gunning does think we will have to carry on working for longer.

April 2008

[Copyright Radio Netherlands 2008]