Guest article: The problem of the unofficial quota for women at the university

At least 40 percent women on the supervisory boards of listed companies in the European Union: This is what Ursula von der Leyen demands in a new legislative proposal from the EU Commission.

The German government under Chancellor Olaf Scholz should support the initiative.

In the event of an EU-wide quota for women on supervisory boards, many German companies would be under pressure – the legally anchored quota in Germany has been 30 percent since 2015.

Since the summer of last year, there must also be at least one woman on the board if it consists of more than three people.

Von der Leyen's idea is not new: the Commission was already discussing an EU-wide quota for supervisory boards in 2012 - the German government rejected the law at the time.

Although there are many complaints about the low proportion of women in management positions, things are only slowly changing in practice.

In Germany, the proportion of female board members among the 40 largest listed companies in the Dax rose somewhat faster than in previous years to 18.1 percent.

Numerous studies have already examined how explicit quotas for women work.

For example, in 2018 Marianne Bertrand, Sandra Black, Sissel Jensen and Adriana Lleras-Muney researched the effect of Norwegian board reform.

While they show that the reform actually increased the proportion of women on executive boards, seven years after the reform, there was still nothing in the management levels below the executive board in the companies concerned.

Andrea Weber and Agata Maida 2020 confirm this when analyzing an Italian board reform.

Male professors predominate in all courses

Nowadays, companies in the public eye are under pressure to fill their positions in a more diverse manner, even if they do not have any fixed guidelines.

However, very few people set themselves specific goals – they often want to “be more diverse” or bring “more women” to the management level.

This harbors risks: The implicit quotas can unintentionally result in less rather than more diversity: It can happen that companies consider their diversity goal to be achieved as soon as two women sit on the board - even if the other 8 members are male.

In general, discrimination is difficult to prove, as researchers rarely have enough insight into the recruitment process and detailed information on the qualifications of individual applicants to make definitive judgments.

In my study, I propose a new method to statistically uncover this type of discrimination and apply this test to professorships at German universities.

At 20.5 percent, the proportion of women among full professors at universities in Germany is particularly low in an international comparison.

This emerges from a report by the EU Commission.

In the EU, fewer women are employed as professors only in Belgium and Luxembourg (20.3 and 17.7 percent respectively); Croatia (43 percent) and Bosnia-Hercegovina (46.6 percent) have the highest proportion of women.

It is perhaps unsurprising that the proportion of women professors in Germany is highest in the humanities and lowest in engineering.

However, there is not a single subject in this country in which women hold the majority of professorships.

Even in German Studies, where the proportion of women among students is 78.5 percent,

It needs explicit percentage quotas for correct change

The methodology is based on a simple idea: if gender is not a factor in hiring, then the probability that a vacancy will be filled by a woman is the same as the proportion of women in the research area.

In other words: If there are 20 percent female professors in Germany, then the probability that a vacant professorship will be filled by a woman is 20 percent.

I analyze whether this is actually the case using personal data from the Federal Statistical Office for university members in 2015 for all departments.

The result: the distribution of women among professorships does not correspond to the distribution that one would expect based on the average proportion of women in the respective discipline.

There are far too many departments in which exactly two positions are held by women - regardless of the size of the department.

This often means that women are underrepresented and that more positions should actually be occupied by women.

However, given the average proportion of women in the subject, it is also possible that one would not actually expect a female professorship and that the positions are still filled by women due to social pressure to be diverse.

The field of study does not seem to play a role in the implicit quotas: it can be found in fields with a female connotation,

The results can be transferred to private companies and imply that the public pressure to diversify leads to unofficial quotas for women in management positions.

The fact that the proportion of women in professorships in Germany is only increasing very slowly, despite a wide range of initiatives, indicates that implicit quotas for a higher proportion of women in top positions are not sufficient.

Without fixed specifications, such as those that exist with an explicit percentage quota, there is a risk that the proportion of women will stagnate at the current level.

It remains to be seen whether an EU-wide quota for women will actually make a difference.

Lena Janys is a junior professor at the University of Bonn.