Frankfurt (dpa) – More women have made it to the highest management level of Germany’s listed companies this year. As of September 1, there were 25 more female board members than in the previous year, according to a survey published on Wednesday by the non-profit Allbright Foundation.
It is the largest annual increase for companies listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange’s MDax and SDax indexes.
The share of female top managers rose by 3.3 percentage points to 13.4 per cent with 93 women now having boardroom positions – compared with 603 men. More than half of the companies still have no women on their board, according to the data.
Germany continues to lag behind other countries in this area. In the 30 top US companies, for example, the proportion of women is 31.1 per cent, followed by Britain (27.4 per cent) and Sweden (27.1 per cent).
“Companies should not sit back now and hide behind one ‘token woman’,” Allbright Foundation executive directors Wiebke Ankersen and Christian Berg urged.
“They will be judged on whether a real transformation comes about here, as it has long been in full swing in other Western industrialised countries – and that requires a significantly higher proportion of women on the boards.”
Under recent legislation listed companies employing more than 2,000 people in Germany must now appoint at least one woman to their board.
Other listed or co-determined companies that do not fall under the minimum requirement will have to give reasons if they plan to have a board without any women members.
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