Two out of six.

Since February, when Melanie Maas-Brunner, who holds a PhD in chemistry, was appointed, two women have been on the top management team at BASF.

Four years ago, the supervisory board brought the business economist Saori Dubourg to the board of directors.

The world's largest chemical company has exceeded the quota for women.

It's still worth mentioning in the chemical industry.

After all, the shortage of women continues to this day from universities to leadership circles.

Bernd Freytag

Business correspondent Rhein-Neckar-Saar based in Mainz.

  • Follow I follow

Dubourg and Maas-Brunner do not run the risk of ending up as a quota woman.

You have set out to change BASF.

Confident, determined, one foot on the gas.

Since the supervisory board is still recruiting the CEO from within its own ranks, there is a not so small probability that the incumbent Martin Brudermüller could one day be inherited by a woman.

The two women not only come from the same generation, they are both of the Group's own generation.

And unlike the first woman on the BASF board of directors, Margret Suckale, who was brought in by Deutsche Bahn, they are not strangers to chemistry.

Both know the company inside out.

Both know what makes this industry tick.

opposites attract

Maas-Brunner and Dubourg could hardly be more different. The contrasts stand out immediately. The elegant German-Japanese Dubourg, a graduate in business administration, a high school student, and violinist, keeps up with the big picture, the positioning of the group in a changing society. She can say in a friendly, soft and firm tone, “We have to feel the new way of thinking,” and a minute later speak equally friendly and firm about a new billion-dollar purchase.

Maas-Brunner, a refreshing bob, is different.

She takes care of the nitty-gritty: Her expertise is in demand wherever production is boiling, above all: where and how it should boil.

As Labor Director, she is responsible for the European plants and the headquarters in Ludwigshafen, the largest connected chemical area in the world.

Climate change is forcing a conversion there that has never been done before.

In order to reduce CO2 emissions, the production processes have to be electrified.

To do this, the group has to get its own green electricity from wind farms in the North Sea to Ludwigshafen.

It depends on what you can do

As if that weren't enough, Maas-Brunner - widely respected in the group - has also taken on research and development as Chief Technology Officer, the heart of the business of CEO Brudermüller. It turned the area, which was endowed with 2 billion euros, on its head within months. In order to bring the research closer to the customers, she has ordered the 1,800 employees to the front, so to speak, in the company units. Research is not an end in itself, it has to be worthwhile - that is the signal.

The fact that the fifty-three-year-old has only recently been part of the top management circle does not prevent her from clearly expressing her opinion.

She shouldn't always object, a superior - a man - told her once, she says and laughs.

The woman from Korschenbroich also explains with amusement that when she started out in production, a toilet had to be rebuilt and locker photos had to be taken down through official channels.

The man-woman issue is one more thing, but at BASF you are measured by what you do - and she likes that.