Status: 07/31/2025 11:33 a.m.
The management levels of the German soccer professional clubs remain firmly in men’s hands. Only six percent of the top positions in the Bundesliga and the second division were recently filled with women. In the north, FC St. Pauli and Werder Bremen are positive examples.
This emerges from the annual report “Location of the League”, which the non -profit organization “Football can do more” (“FKM”) for diversity in leadership bodies in German professional football. According to this, as in the previous season, only six management positions – in the presidium or management – were occupied by women.
These are distributed over four clubs: FC St. Pauli (three), Werder Bremen, 1. FC Heidenheim and Schalke 04 (one each). In the course of the season, a total of 19 management positions were filled, only one woman was elected to top management: Luise Gottberg, who moved to Vice President at St. Pauli.
St. Pauli with three vice presidents
At the Kiezclub there are two other vice presidents in Hanna Obersteller and ESIN. Women are even outnumbered in the seven-member supervisory board, which Kathrin Deumelandt chairs, and to whom Sandra Schwedler, Inga Schlegel and Anna-Maria Hass are.
At the Bundesliga rival Werder in Anne-Kathrin Laufmann (managing director of sports and sustainability), as with 1. FC Heidenheim and Schalke 04, it made it in a responsible position. Otherwise, the 36 German men’s professional associations of the first and second league remain a male domain.
Minister Bär: “There is still a lot to do”
“The results show that there is still a lot to do-with six percent women in top management, Bundesliga clubs are significantly worse than comparable small and medium-sized companies in Germany,” said Federal Research Minister Dorothee Bär (CSU).
The control bodies of the 36 clubs, responsible for the appointment of top management, are just as close to women. Of 271 positions, 28 (10.3 percent) are eliminated by female members. The proportion of international profiles (3.3 percent) is even lower.
Profic clubs praised improvement
“We need more women in leadership positions in football,” said Axel Hellmann, board spokesman for Eintracht Frankfurt, member of the Presidium at the German Football League (DFL) and co-advisory board chairman of the “FKM”. “But we will only achieve this if this is carried and promoted in the clubs, by the members and fans.”
Alexander Wehrle, CEO at VfB Stuttgart, said: “Our numbers show that we are not yet where we want to go.” Bayer Leverkusen’s managing director Fernando Carro said that diversity was “important for our organization and for the entire society”. “There is still a lot of work to do in football.”
Does these statements remain the big question of why the clubs no longer add women to their management? These leave the officials and the study unanswered.
Kraus sees pressure as the main reason for the weak quota
“So far, all the positive conversations and efforts of many decision-makers have not opened in the relevant figures,” said Katja Kraus, Co-Advisory Board Chairman of “FKM”. The analysis is “no blame”, according to the former goalkeeper, who was the first woman at Hamburger SV in 2003 to move into the board of a Bundesliga club, “but football is a result sport”.