What the women’s quota achieves – and what does not

This emerges from an analysis of the board committees in Dax and MDax of the personnel consultancy Russell Reynolds Associates, which was previously available to the Handelsblatt. However, only those companies that are required to do so improve the proportion of female top managers.

And 199 of the 246 Dax board members are still male. As of January 1, eight of the 40 companies did not have a single woman on their executive board, namely: Brenntag, Hello Fresh, Linde, Porsche SE, Delivery Hero, Symrise, Sartorius and MTU.

The latter two must elect a woman for the next board appointment. The other companies are exempt from the statutory quota for women because they are either not co-determined or the Executive Board – as at Delivery Hero and Symrise – consists of only three members.

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“The intensive public discussion about women in management positions is bearing fruit and has contributed significantly to the historically largest increase in the proportion of women in German top management,” says Jens-Thomas Pietralla, an expert on board committees at Russell Reynolds. So far, however, the increase is “limited to the narrow segment” that is covered by the law.

MDax: Only five new female appointments in one year

This becomes particularly clear when looking at the medium-sized stocks, the MDax. In total, only five women were newly appointed to executive committees there in 2021. One of them – Lisa Agona, head of marketing at Teamviewer – only stayed in office for half a year. As of January 1, 29 of the 50 MDAX companies did not have a single woman on the board.

The proportion of women at the top management level also increased slightly from eleven to 11.7 percent – bringing up the rear in an international comparison. Because in the MDax, many companies are exempt from the legal obligation.

The Second Management Positions Act, FüPoG II for short, has been in force in Germany since last year. According to this, listed companies with equal co-determination with more than 2000 employees and more than three board members must ensure that they have at least one woman on the board when they are filled. The transition period for the regulation expires on August 1st.

A minimum of 30 percent has long applied to the supervisory board of large corporations. According to Russell Reynolds, this mark could also be broken in two years on Dax boards – if Germany’s top companies continue to get as many women on board positions as they have recently. Continental, Fresenius Medical Care and Siemens Healthineers are currently the front runners, each with 40 percent women on their executive boards.

“Now it’s important to keep up the pace,” says Wiebke Ankersen, Germany head of the Allbright Foundation, which is committed to more diversity in management positions. The current dynamic shows that there are enough women at the top of the company.

At the same time, the expert warns: Experience from the supervisory boards shows that the momentum for female appointments decreases significantly “as soon as a socially acceptable level is reached,” says Ankersen.

New appointments: More women in core board positions

What is striking about the list of new appointments is that women are increasingly being used in core functions on corporate boards, which for years were considered to be the domain of men. Although the only CEO of a Dax group, even after the expansion of the leading index to 40 members, is Belen Garijo at the pharmaceutical company Merck. But: According to the Russell analysis, an above-average number of women work in board areas such as transformation, IT and technology.

And in the finance department, too, corporations are increasingly relying on female CFOs. In mid-December, Katja Dürrfeld was appointed as the new CFO of Continental AG. The 49-year-old is very experienced in accounting for the automotive supplier and knows the industry well.

But that is not a must, as Kristin Neumann shows. The 49-year-old will join Brenntag in April as Chief Financial Officer. Chemical trading is new territory for the manager: she comes from the airline service provider LSG Lufthansa Service Holding, where she has been CFO since 2014.

In fact, when looking for a CFO, corporations can draw on a much larger pool of top executives outside of their own industry – unlike when filling operational management positions.

There are also noticeable effects on accounting and controlling in companies when women are in charge of the finance department, says headhunter Sabine Hansen, who specializes in filling top management positions with women. “Female CFOs practice more conservative financial reporting, pursue less aggressive tax planning policies and prefer higher levels of liquidity than their male counterparts.” This is also confirmed by studies from America and China.

“In some sectors, the quota remains a challenge because the number of interested and suitable female applicants is only growing slowly,” says Iris Plöger, member of the BDI executive board. In digitization in particular, there is “room for improvement” in the proportion of women. With a 17 percent share of women in the IT sector, Germany is one of the bottom places in Europe. Such imbalances cannot be remedied by introducing quotas alone, says Plöger.

From her point of view, politicians are called upon to address the causes of the low number of women in top positions. “This includes expanding the public infrastructure to improve the work-life balance for employees.”

Collaboration: Bert Fröndhoff

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