25 fewer men and 22 more women: Compared to the previous year, the proportion of women on the boards of the 160 companies listed in the Dax, MDax or SDax has increased. For the first time, there are now more German stock exchange companies that have women on their boards than those whose boards are entirely male. This is the result of a study by the German-Swedish Allbright Foundation.
In the USA, France and Great Britain, boards with several women have long been the norm: 88 percent of American and French companies have several women on the board.
Fewer women than Christians
In Germany, only five DAX companies each have three female board members: airbus, Beiersdorf, the Deutsche Telekom, Mercedes-Benz and the alliance. At Allianz it should be in January a fourth woman will be appointed to the board: namely the future CFO Claire-Marie Lepoutre.
However, the highest positions of power in companies – the board of directors and the chairman of the supervisory board – are still firmly in male hands: there are more CEOs named Christian than female CEOs. Compared to the previous year, the number of female chairmen of the board of directors has actually fallen from nine to seven, and the number of female chairmen of supervisory boards has fallen from eight to six.
As of September 1, 2023, the authors of the Allbright study counted a total of 631 women and 1,119 men on the supervisory boards of the 160 German stock exchange companies, which corresponds to a proportion of women of around 36 percent. After all: With 39 percent of women, the supervisory boards of the 40 DAX companies are approaching a balanced ratio of men and women.
Striking: While men are predominantly promoted to the board of directors within the company, women are more likely to get there when they change companies: they are more often recruited externally with the help of headhunters.
The subject areas also differ: a good one in five new female board members took on the position of human resources manager last year, and only one man joined the board as human resources manager. 14 percent of male board members were newly appointed to the board as CEOs, while the figure for women was only two percent.
If you compare the proportion of women on the boards of the top 40 companies in Germany, France, Great Britain, Poland, Sweden and the USA, Germany has remained in second to last place for two years.
The managing directors of the Allbright Foundation, Wiebke Ankersen and Christian Berg, therefore see little reason to celebrate: In order to permanently anchor equal opportunities in the German economy, it is not enough to appoint just one woman to the board.
“Thomas has been the most common name on German boards for many years and has stubbornly remained at the top: Contrary to expectations, the number of Thomases has not decreased over time – there are more than ever before,” says Ankersen.
The number of board members with the first name Thomas will reach a new high in 2023: 30 Thomasses can be found there. For Ankersen, this is proof that the men in the executive suites still prefer to surround themselves with slightly younger reflections of themselves. This created a kind of “Thomas cycle” in which new board members are recruited according to the template of the existing board members.