BERLIN (Dow Jones)–The proportion of women on the boards of Germany’s large companies has increased, but they mostly remain alone among men. In late autumn 2023, the proportion of women on the boards of the 200 private sector companies with the highest sales was 18 percent, two percentage points more than a year earlier, according to the results of a study by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW).
In the 40 largest listed companies (DAX-40), the proportion of female board members was even slightly higher at 23 percent, as the latest DIW female manager barometer showed. Accordingly, banks and insurance companies were able to make up ground against other companies and improve to just under 17 and a good 18 percent respectively.
An additional study shows that the wage difference between men and women, the so-called gender pay gap, decreases among all employees in a company when more women are in management positions.
“With a few exceptions, the number of women in top committees of large companies has been increasing year after year for some time – sometimes more, sometimes less. The bottom line is that women continue to be clearly underrepresented,” said Virginia Sondergeld, research associate in the Gender Economics research group DIW Berlin. According to the study, the proportion of women on the supervisory boards of the company groups examined is consistently higher than on the executive boards, but nowhere does it exceed the 40 percent mark.
According to the institute’s assessment, both the gender quota for supervisory boards, which currently applies to around 100 companies, and the minimum participation for board members, which a good 60 companies have to adhere to, are effective.
“Looking at the board level, it is also clear that many companies apparently do not do much more than they have to,” said Katharina Wrohlich, head of the Gender Economics research group at DIW Berlin.
Accordingly, almost 85 percent of the 200 largest companies have at most one female board member. Anja Kirsch, professor of gender, governance and international management at the Free University of Berlin, sees the danger that the target of having a woman on the board of directors will gradually become established as a new social norm. “That would be significant progress compared to the target of zero women on the board, which many companies set themselves not so long ago. Taking the minimum participation literally and actually only involving women in board positions to a minimum is not possible Wisdom will be the last resort,” she warned.
A total of more than 500 companies were examined for the DIW Manager Barometer, including the 200 companies with the highest sales, 160 companies listed in the DAX indices, 100 banks, 60 insurance companies and almost 70 companies in which the federal government has a stake.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 17, 2024 04:30 ET (09:30 GMT)