Bucharest, 24 March 2023 | The Women on Boards Directive adopted in November 2022 by the European Union provides a legal framework for gender balance in decision-making for companies across Europe. It creates an important opportunity to bring this issue to the attention of the Romanian public opinion and generate the premises to improve representation, based both on a legislative argument, as well as on a well-trained selection pool.

Part of Professional Women’s Network Romania’s courses of action towards gender balance is creating solid bridges between the organisation and its international partners, based on common values and goals. Therefore, the process of calibrating legislation and of creating a professional selection pool of board ready women is smoother, as it is founded on the experience and good practices of the states that have proven results in the field of diversity and inclusion.

To this end, the partnership between PWN Romania and European Women on Boards is an important step towards developing the Women on Boards pillar into an efficient driver of gender balance at leadership level. Based on this agreement, PWN Romania’s programs dedicated to women pursuing or occupying a board position will benefit from the expertise of our European collaborators, while members of the association will have the opportunity to participate in international programs.

“It is extremely important for EWOB to ensure that legislation adopted at the European level actually leads to changes at the local level. This is why we warmly welcome the Professional Women’s Network as a partner in Romania. Together we will work on the implementation of the Women on Boards Directive in Romania to achieve greater gender equality in decision-making.”- Kristen Anderson, CEO of EWOB

“We are grateful and confident that together and having the support of European Women on Boards we can promote and implement best practices for gender balanced leadership. Our association is heading towards this goal on several paths, from advocacy, educational and mentoring programs, to creating and promoting a professional data base for board ready women. Joining forces with our international partners will streamline our journey towards our common goals and will help us generate a broader impact in favour of gender balance at all levels of society.” – Ileana Botez, President of PWN Romania

“Our Women on Boards pillar has had a steady and organic growth, reaching a new stage in its evolution with the development of an advocacy task force, dedicated to drafting and promoting gender balanced legislation, particularly in respect of board representation. The partnership with European Women on Boards will help us accelerate our growth in this direction, as well as in our training and women on boards mentoring chapters, by exposing our community to international practices and models, as well as to highly functioning diversity and inclusion environments.” – Violeta Ciurel, VP Women on Boards PWN Romania

PWN Romania is a non-government, non-profit association, based on volunteer work, whose mission is to support women’s ascent into leadership positions in order to accelerate gender balance in leadership structures. The PWN Romania Community gathers over 300 members in management position or entrepreneurs, in over 20 industries.

Developing women’s professional potential, supporting entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs and the economic empowerment of women, equality and diversity in the leading structures of companies are among PWN Romania’s goals.

PWN Romania’s main pillars are Mentoring – for women who are starting their career or are in mid-management positions, a program unfolding its 9^th edition; Entrepreneurship – developing an business acceleration program called the Toolkit for Women Entrepreneurs, in a new format since 2022, structured on three levels: Start-up, Scale-up and Unicorn, now at its 8^th edition; and the Women on Boards pillar – PWN Romania organised four editions of the Women on Boards Academy and two editions of Mentoring Women on Boards, both unique programs offering career women a structured approach and training to access board positions. In order to promote members with exceptional achievements, but also to bring forward to the community people with valuable experience in relevant fields, our Communication pillar has developed a talk-show – PWN Live Talks – the third season being streamed every other week live on all our social-media.

Established in 2011, PWN Romania is part of PWN Global, a fast-developing network that engulfs over 3500 members and volunteers from 30 cities all over the world.

Find out more about PWN Romania on their website, and via Facebook and LinkedIn.