Equal rights: Women remain severely underrepresented in management levels

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Photo: Christian Charisius / dpa

Women are clearly in the minority in management positions in German companies.

In 27 percent of 4.7 million companies there is currently at least one woman among the owners, management or board of directors, the credit agency Schufa said based on an analysis of the data available to it on the occasion of International Women's Day.

This means that the proportion has remained almost unchanged compared to last year.

The proportion of women in the entire first management level in companies in Germany is stagnating at 23.9 percent.

The KfW banking group also comes to the conclusion in an analysis that women are “generally underrepresented” in management positions in medium-sized companies.

Their proportion has even fallen: in 2023, 602,000 small and medium-sized companies were run by a woman.

That was around 155,000 fewer than a year earlier.

According to KfW, of the approximately 3.8 million medium-sized companies, 15.8 percent were recently led by a female boss.

A year earlier it was 19.7 percent.

“The promotion of women has made further progress in large companies”

The development bank explains the development, among other things, by the fact that women are founding companies less often and recently even with a declining trend.

"In order to see more women in leadership positions and as bosses, gender stereotypes and traditional role models must be broken down in areas such as upbringing, education or the division of labor at home," said KfW chief economist Fritzi Köhler-Geib.

Schufa boss Tanja Birkholz sees some initial progress: “In large companies, the sensitivity to the promotion of women and the implementation of the corresponding measures has made further progress.

The effect of the statutory quota for women can also be seen here. According to the Schufa evaluation, the proportion of companies with at least one woman in the first management level among partnerships and corporations is around 20 percent.

For companies with sales of more than one billion euros, the figure is 34 percent.

Since August 1, 2021, listed and co-determined companies with more than 2,000 employees and more than three board members have had to ensure that at least one woman sits on the top floor when appointing new members to the board.

hej/dpa-AFX