The proportion of women in top management of the largest German stock exchange groups has reached an all-time high. For the first time, more than a quarter (25.7 percent) of the board members in the 40 DAX companies are female, as an analysis by the organization “Women on Supervisory Boards” (Fidar), which is available to the German Press Agency, shows. This is slightly more than in a previous study in January (23.5 percent) and a record since the Fidar index was calculated in 2011.
More and more women are also joining supervisory boards: here the quota in the Dax was 39.7 percent, a good percentage point more than in January.
“We see from the DAX 40 boards what binding regulations can achieve for equal participation,” says Fidar founding president Monika Schulz-Strelow. The DAX companies have more than tripled the proportion of women on their boards over the past ten years – “despite all the doubts expressed that there are not enough qualified women to fill the required positions.”
According to the study, seven women have been appointed to the boards of DAX companies since June alone. There are also three women at the top for the first time: Merck-Boss Belén Garijo (64), Bettina Orlopp (54), who has been the Commerzbank leads, and Karin Rådström (45), also head of Daimler Truck since October.
Far from gender equality
For the study, the board members of 160 companies from the stock market indices Dax, MDax and SDax as well as 18 other listed companies with equal co-determination were examined as of December 1st.
According to Fidar, on average across all companies examined, a fifth (20.3 percent) of board members were female – slightly more than in January (18.9); that too is a record. On the other hand, the proportion of women on supervisory boards rose only minimally to 37.2 percent. We are still a long way from gender parity, criticized Schulz-Strelow.
In the Dax, the proportion of women on the defense company’s board was higher Rheinmetall highest, followed by Commerzbank and the medical technology provider Siemens Healthineers. At the end there was the building materials company Heidelberg Materials, Volkswagen and taillight Porsche SE.
Fidar: Regulations work – but there is still a lot of catching up to do
In order to bring more women into top management, politicians have introduced legal obligations: Since 2016, there has been a quota of 30 percent women when appointing new supervisory boards of listed and co-determined companies. Since summer 2022, large companies with boards of directors that have more than three members must also have at least one woman represented on the management board.
These rules work, says Fidar. In the currently 100 companies to which the quota on the supervisory board applies, the proportion of women on both supervisory boards and executive boards is significantly higher at a good 38 percent and almost 24 percent, respectively, than in the 78 companies that do not fall under the quota. This shows that voluntary commitments hardly lead to improvement.