In international comparison, relatively few women still reach top management positions in listed companies in Germany – even though many women have the necessary training.
Women in leadership positions are underrepresented in companies and in public service.
Photo-K/fotolia.com
One in four board members in the top management of the 40 major companies listed on the German stock index Dax is now a woman. However, according to a study by the Allbright Foundation, this still does not allow Germany to catch up with other western industrialized nations. With a share of 24.7 percent of women on the boards of Dax companies as of September 1, Germany was well behind the UK (32.1 percent).
The USA followed in second place (30.1 percent), ahead of France (28.8 percent) and Sweden (28.2 percent). According to the study, only Poland performed worse than Germany, with a share of women of 18.2 percent among management board members. The situation was somewhat better for the supervisory boards of Dax companies, where four out of ten members were female.
Hardly Any Women at the Top of Management and Supervisory Boards
Looking at all 160 companies listed in the Dax, M-Dax and S-Dax stock market indices together, the percentage of women in management board positions increased by 2.3 percentage points to 19.7 percent within a year. This was a smaller increase than in the previous study (plus 3.2 percentage points). As of September 1, 37 percent of all members of the supervisory bodies of all companies in the Dax family were female. There was little change in the situation with regard to top positions: according to the study, there were ten female supervisory board chairpersons (previous year: six) and seven female chairpersons of the management board as of the reporting date, the same number as in the previous year.
In Germany, a lot of time has been lost in the quota discussion, explained the managing directors of the Allbright Foundation, Wiebke Ankersen and Christian Berg. German companies need to focus much more on appropriate measures if they want to catch up with international competitors.
Companies Should Set Goals and Scrutinize their Practices
Companies should set concrete internal goals for increasing the proportion of women in management positions and also scrutinize which structures might stand in the way of achieving these goals and where else problems might lie, said Ankersen. Possibly unconscious prejudices also play a role in the selection of managers.
The fact that the proportion of women in top management in Germany is still not making real progress is also surprising because more than half of those graduating with a degree in business administration are female – “and not just since yesterday,” Ankersen emphasized.
It is somewhat encouraging that women have been increasingly appointed to the position of chief financial officer – a position that is often a stepping stone to the position of CEO. At Commerzbank, for example, Bettina Orlopp, who had been head of finance for many years, was recently appointed CEO.
The German-Swedish Allbright Foundation describes itself as a politically independent, non-profit organization based in Stockholm and Berlin. It is committed to increasing the number of women and diversity in business leadership.
This is a partly automated translation of this german article by dpa.
