The proportion of women in top management of the largest German stock exchange companies 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. That’s a little 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 the supervisory boards: here the quota was in the DAX at 39.7 percent, a good percentage point more than in January.Three women at the top of the company “We see on 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.” Since June alone, according to the study Seven women appointed to the boards of DAX companies. In addition, there are three women at the top for the first time: Merck boss Belén Garijo, Bettina Orlopp, who has headed Commerzbank since October, and Karin Radström, also head of Daimler Truck since October. Far from gender equality. The deadline for the study was December 1st the boards of directors of the 160 companies from the stock market indices Dax, M-Dax and S-Dax as well as 18 other listed companies with equal co-determination Companies examined. 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 board of the defense company Rheinmetall was highest, followed by Commerzbank and the medical technology provider Siemens Healthineers. At the end there were the building materials company Heidelberg Materials, Volkswagen and at the bottom Porsche SE.
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Regulations work In order to bring more women into top management, politicians have introduced legal obligations: Since 2016, a quota of 30 percent women has applied to new appointments to the supervisory boards of listed companies with equal co-determination. Since summer 2022, large companies with boards of directors that have more than three members must have at least one woman represented on the management board.More on the topicThese rules worked, 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.
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