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Is a quota enough to break male dominance on many company boards?
Photo: Oliver Berg / dpa
You can literally hear the moaning in the black-clad penguin floors of large companies: Why on earth does that have to be?
The black-red coalition has done the unimaginable and agreed on a binding quota for women on executive boards.
In the management bodies of listed companies with equal co-determination and with more than three members, one member must be female in future.
Next week, the breakthrough achieved in a working group will be presented to the coalition leaders for decision.
Isn't Corona plague enough?
Do we need a law now of all times to force companies to let women into the holy of holies, the boardrooms?
Yes, it does.
Unfortunately.
In 2001, the economy prevented an equality law by vowing and pledging to voluntarily increase the proportion of women in management.
Which, as is so often the case with voluntary commitments, did not happen.
To this day, the following applies mainly and not only in the Dax: Unfortunately, you have to stay outside.
In comparison with British, American or Scandinavian corporations, German companies appear to be shameful, staid, stuffy, yesterday.
"The powdery mildew of patriarchy still rests on companies like scales on suit shoulders."
The mildew of patriarchy still rests on companies like scales on suit shoulders.
It doesn't matter whether the double-breasted suits are replaced by hip hoodies;
Little changes in the minds of recruiters and overseers.
In the young IT companies, too, it is mainly men who have had the say.
Business as usual for centuries.
Nothing seems to help.
Not that women now often have better university degrees.
No studies that prove the great, untapped potential of competent women and the high performance of mixed teams.
Eleven of the 30 DAX companies have no women on their boards
No diversification sermon.
No managers who act like men.
Even the role models from the USA and Sweden do not give German bosses pause for thought, where 97 percent of listed companies have several women on the board - and despite this enormous burden, mysteriously, they do not go bankrupt.
In Germany, eleven of the 30 DAX companies do not have a single female executive on the board.
The proportion of women has even fallen to the level of 2017 and is currently only 12.8 percent.
Which is because a number of women who made it to the top were dumped again or threw in the towel.
It will not be forgotten how the software house SAP was celebrated when Jennifer Morgan was promoted to the top of the DAX group as the first woman in October 2019, and also the most valuable.
Half a year later, the party was over, the 49-year-old, who had worked at SAP for 16 years, had to leave due to irreconcilable strategic differences with her 38-year-old co-CEO Klein.
In the same year, Siemens parted with its celebrated HR manager Janina Kugel.
At Allianz, it was over after only 17 months with Ana-Christina Grohnert, Head of Human Resources, at Deutsche Bank compliance chief Sylvie Matherat had to leave, and at Lufthansa, Labor Director Bettina Volkens resigned.
At the Federal Employment Agency, board member Valerie Holsboer lost an ugly power struggle.
Wiebke Köhler, ex-HR director at Axa-Versicherung until October 2018, did not survive a year in the position, Christine Hohmann-Dennhardt stayed for 13 months as the ethics director at Volkswagen.
And so on.
You can then hear it behind the scenes, the popular killer phrase: They just can't do it.
In fact, it seems to be the men who cannot.
Companies are blatantly failing to change their culture in such a way that women can operate successfully there.
"The newcomers fail because of powerful networks, well-oiled friendships between men and individual provocateurs who are jovially tolerated to amuse the gorilla herd."
The newcomers fail because of powerful networks, well-oiled male friendships, and individual provocateurs who are jovially tolerated to amuse the gorilla herd.
Anyone who doesn't find that funny has no sense of humor.
In order not to find out what causes so many women in management positions to fail, the companies pay high severance payments to the managers who have been shot down, which is accompanied by a vow of silence.
Nobody is allowed to talk about their experiences, about the shallows, not even about other people's and their own mistakes.
This muzzle is complicit in the misery.
Because a possible successor suddenly falls into the same traps.
And also fails, miraculously.
Which in turn proves: women just can't do it.
The overdue Equal Opportunities Act alone does not help against this mechanism.
It only helps: talking.
Disclose.
Unpacking.
Together, publicly and ruthlessly.
A kind of MeToo movement by women leaders could trigger a social discussion and finally bring to light why German companies are so embarrassingly lagging behind when it comes to diversity.
The mantra still holds that it is unprofessional and a weakening of the market value to report openly about his experiences.
The separation is still successful.
Although the cases are similar, they multiply and repeat.
If that changes, the house of cards on which German corporate culture stands could collapse.
And women would finally have an equal chance of success.
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