Germany passed a law for women in boards
To increase women in board positions is one of many equality issues frequently discussed. German government has recently agreed to a mandatory quota for women on the boards of listed companies. Enthusiasts have described it as a landmark moment in the biggest economy in Europe.
Listed companies with management boards of more than three executives must appoint at least one woman to the C-suite, according to a presentation by Germany’s ministry for family affairs, senior citizens, women and youth.
Germany adopted mandatory quotas for supervisory boards in 2015, with the effect that women now account for 36% of the non-executive board roles at large companies, according to the European Institute for Gender Equality.
The end of women-less boardrooms
“We are putting an end to women-free boardrooms at large companies,” Franziska Giffey, the minister for women and families, said in a statement.
But some were less enthusiastic with the Federation of German Industries (BDI), which represents 40 trade groups, saying it supports efforts to encourage the appointment of women to leadership positions, but that a fixed board quota is “a major intervention in entrepreneurial freedom.”
“The tendency to try to rectify socio-political problems through the economy and companies must in no way become the rule,” BDI executive board member Iris Plöger said in a statement. “Politicians should rather show greater courage in tackling the reasons why there are so few women on company boards,” she said, pointing to the need to expand digital infrastructure “to make it easier for everyone to balance work and family life.”
Ms Plöger said companies should be given “as long as possible” to comply with the new measures and should be protected against sanctions where it is “not practically possible” to meet the requirements.
According to the Swedish-German non-profit Allbright Foundation, women make up no more than 12.8% of the management boards of Germany’s 30 largest listed companies.
The European Union´s office for statistics Eurostat says that last year women accounted for a little over one quarter of board members of publicly listed companies in the EU (28%), and for less than one fifth of senior executives (18%).
Highest share of female board members in France
The largest share of female board members in the largest publicly listed companies is recorded in France (45%), followed by Sweden (38%), Belgium, Germany and Italy (all 36%) as well as the Netherlands and Finland (both 34%).
At EU level, just over a third (37%) of managers are women. This share increased slightly compared with 2012 (36%). On 8 March (International Women´s Day) 2020, only 1 manager out of 3 in the EU is a woman… … even less in senior management positions More than 6.7 million persons hold a managerial position in the European Union of 27 Member States (EU): 4.3 million men (63% of all managers) and 2.5 million women (37%).
”In other words, although representing approximately half of all employed persons in the EU, women continue to be under-represented amongst managers”, Eurostat summarized.
Managers are mostly women only in Latvia.
The largest share of women among managerial positions is recorded in Latvia, the only Member State where women are a majority (53%) in this occupation. It is followed by Bulgaria (49%), Poland (48%), Estonia (46%), Slovenia (44%), Lithuania, Hungary and Sweden (all 42%), Ireland (41%) and Portugal (40%). At the opposite end of the scale, women account for less than a third of managers in Cyprus (19%), followed by Luxembourg (23%), Denmark (27%), Italy (28%), the Netherlands (29%), Czechia and Germany (both 31%), as well as Greece, Croatia, Malta and Austria (all 32%).
According to Jutta Allmendinger, president of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. the decision to introduce a quota follows decades of lobbying by women in Germany on issues pertaining to gender equality in the workplace.
“A long stalemate has finally been broken, when leading conservatives started to support the reform, thanks to the tireless efforts and pressure of many women and networks,” she told CNN Business.
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