Survey: Germany making progress, but gender equality far off

Berlin (dpa) – German women have made progress on the jobs market, even though the country is a long way from full gender equality, a survey published in Berlin on Wednesday indicated.

An equal proportion of men and women – 38 per cent – had reached a university or technical college level of schooling, while at lower levels women were more qualified than men, according to the study by the WSI, a social research institute of the Hans Boekler Foundation linked to Germany’s trade unions

According to statistics compiled from 2017, 72 per cent of women aged between 15 and 65 were in employment, against 80 per cent of men. In 1991, the figure for women was 57 per cent.

Women occupied just 8 per cent of the positions on executive boards of the largest 160 companies in Germany, while only 30 per cent of the positions on supervisory boards were held by women.

For women, unpaid work in raising children or in caring for others made up 45 per cent of their total work, against a figure of 28 per cent for men, on the basis of statistics from 2013

In its study, the WSI took 29 indicators into account.