68 of the 100 largest family businesses do not have a woman on the board

Dusseldorf Family businesses in Germany hardly hire female managers for management positions. Most recently, only 8.3 percent of the executive boards of the 100 top-selling family businesses were women. And that’s hardly more than two years ago, when the value was around seven percent. This is the result of a survey by the Allbright Foundation, which was previously available to the Handelsblatt. The foundation is committed to more diversity.

As of March 2022, 68 of the largest local family companies did not even have a single woman on the management board – including well-known companies such as Aldi, Bauhaus, Bertelsmann, Deichmann, Haribo, Kärcher, Kühne + Nagel, Miele, the Schwarz Group (Lidl, Kaufland), Tönnies, Vorwerk, Webasto or Würth.

This standstill is all the more remarkable because the fluctuation in the executive boards of family businesses and the Dax-listed companies has been about the same at around 30 percent in the past two years. Nevertheless, most family-run companies have not managed to modernize their management structures.

The more power the family has in a company, the less diverse the board. The 160 companies in the Dax, MDax and SDax have a 14.3 percent share of women in management.

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In the Dax-40, the proportion of women on the board is almost 20 percent, which is below average in an international comparison. For the 70 companies that are exclusively family-owned, the figure is only 4.8 percent. In such companies, no other shareholders act as a corrective.

For family businesses, which are often world market leaders, the monoculture on the board is increasingly becoming a business risk – precisely because it makes it more difficult to find talent. “Women prefer to go where there are already women,” says Wiebke Ankersen, Managing Director of the Allbright Foundation. So “family businesses would become second choice”.

In addition, there is a risk of reputation loss, especially among the younger generation: “Brands can no longer afford not to ensure equal opportunities,” says the expert. Stefan Heidbreder, Managing Director of the Foundation for Family Businesses, admits that the numbers are not yet “as they should be”.

But the family businesses are very aware of the situation. Because: Studies show again and again that mixed management bodies correlate with greater business success. In this way, the relatively undiversified executive boards of family businesses could become a brake on the entire local economy. This is because they generate more than half of Germany’s economic output.

Hardly any new female managers in family businesses

The large German family businesses have hardly hired new female managers in the past two years, even though they draw from the same talent pool as the DAX companies. While the proportion of women on the Dax 40 executive boards rose by five percentage points between March 2020 and March 2022, it was only an increase of 1.4 percentage points in the hundred largest family businesses. And in companies that are exclusively family-owned, the proportion of women has not increased at all.

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Just like with Deichmann. Europe’s largest shoe retailer employs 77 percent women, and 70 percent of management positions are also held by women – but none have made it to the top. This is “solely due to the fact that at the time a position was filled, the most suitable person in the respective application process was not female,” says Essen. Allbright Managing Director Ankersen advises building and maintaining “an internal pipeline of women managers” in order to eventually be able to fill management positions internally with women.

>> Read here: Allbright managing director in an interview: “Family companies are the brakes on the German economy when it comes to the proportion of women”

Although Fressnapf and the Schwarz Group have particularly large executive boards with ten and nine members, there is no room for women. Both companies did not provide concrete explanations for this on request. The household appliance manufacturer Miele explains why its five-strong board of directors is all male: Two members come from the owning family, the other three managing directors came at a time when there was still a “long-term plan to win at least one woman for management”. have not given.

More men with the first name Stefan than women

Many of the largest companies that are completely family-owned do not seem to have this. According to the Allbright Foundation, you have appointed seven people with the first name Stefan to the management board in the past two years – but only five women.

The survey shows that when women from the family have a say on the supervisory board, there are almost five times as many female managers on the executive board. An example: Henkel. Among the 100 largest family businesses, Simone Bagel-Trah is only one of three women to chair the supervisory board, along with Bettina Würth (Würth) and Cathrina Claas (Claas). And there is at least one woman on the Henkel Management Board, Human Resources Manager Sylvie Nicol.

>>> Read more: Often Andreas, only rarely Anja or Ali: That’s the first name of Germany’s managing directors

Bagel-Trah told the Handelsblatt: “Diversity is crucial for our future business success.” Diversity increases openness to new things, innovative strength and the motivation and well-being of employees. Henkel wants to fill every second management position across all hierarchical levels with a woman by 2025, but there is no fixed quota for the Management Board.

Like Henkel, 32 of the 100 largest German family businesses have at least one woman on the board. So does Tengelmann with CFO Ágnes Faragó. When asked, the group explained: “We become more attractive as employers when applicants realize that we don’t just limit ourselves to verbal openness.”

The proportion of women in the Dax is higher

However, the fact that Dax 40 companies have more female executives can also be explained by political pressure. Initially, voluntary commitments should do the trick, but only statutory quotas will have an effect. From August, the board of directors of a listed company with equal co-determination must consist of at least one woman and one man with more than three members. Medium-sized companies and start-ups remain unregulated.

The result: As early as 2021, 42 percent of all new appointments to board positions in the Dax went to women, according to data from the Russel Reynolds HR consultancy. The new female appointments include Continental CFO Katja Dürrfeld, Mercedes-Benz Human Resources Sabine Kohleisen and Elisabeth Staudinger, who was appointed Chief Technology Officer at Siemens Healthineers.

At Volkswagen, two women, Hauke ​​Stars and Hildegard Wortmann, rose to top management. Zalando only hired a female CFO in March with Sandra Dembeck.

And in May, the healthcare group Fresenius Medical Care even appointed manager Carla Kriwet as the new CEO. She is scheduled to take office in January 2023 and will then, alongside Belén Garijo from the pharmaceutical company Merck, be the second boss to run a Dax 40 group. Many of the local family businesses are still a long way from such quotas.

More: Deficits in diversity endanger the success of family businesses

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