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Company boards: a woman has to fix it
Photo: Westend61 / Getty Images / Westend61
"29 women".
A film title could be made from this: The 29 could, for example, work out the master plan for a bank robbery or ride into the orange sunset in an alternative western.
In fact, however, a picture in muted colors awaits us, because the 29 should only move into the boards of German companies, and only in those boards that have more than three seats.
According to the draft law that the coalition parties have agreed on, a seat must be occupied by a woman in future.
Hardly anything can be said against this requirement if you want to get serious about equality.
Apparently a kind of inner, invisible quota in favor of male decision-makers, thinkers, planners and high earners is cemented in all of our heads, which withstands all appeals and attempts at self-education.
So a legally anchored counter-quota has to be found so that women have the same opportunities to realize their life plans.
And this right to self-realization and shaping of one's own life exists for
all
women, i.e. not only for those who do socially indispensable (i.e. underpaid or even unpaid) work on children, homes and sick beds, but also for women who desire it To direct major banks, automobile companies and energy companies.
The spurned lesson
However, I cannot resist a slightly cynical undertone.
To this end, I have to go back: There is nothing to suggest that this Corona year has taught a deep lesson in our way of doing business, our energy consumption, our status thinking and solidarity.
Or rather: the lesson was on offer, but was spurned.
Some things in the import and export sector stalled at short notice (clothes, electrical goods, pork, cars), but everyone was happy when things continued.
During the first lockdown in spring, authors and essayists announced the hope that society could use the general forced deceleration to try out new forms of community.
Reduce consumption, cast off the post-us-the-flood mentality.
Finding out what is necessary, what is good - and what is not.
Did it help?
Admittedly, a lot of people have taken a lot of walks since then and hardly any flights have been taken on vacation.
But there was no deeper rethinking.
Now one can ask: What can the 29 female board members do now for the climate and corona crisis?
Nothing.
Worse, you can't help it either.
After all, there is no evidence that female board members are transforming the respective companies from turbo-capitalistic to sustainable, that they would convert armaments factories to build agricultural machinery, or that they would be willing to degrade the car from a status symbol to a means of transport.
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Icon: Spiegel PlusIcon: Spiegel PlusWomen on the Executive Board: Don't you let them - or don't you want to?
Whereby one could immediately object that women do not have to be angels to be allowed to aim high!
Right.
The situation is therefore somewhat reminiscent of the discussion as to whether women are allowed to do so-called service with weapons;
The European Court of Justice only ruled this positively at the beginning of this millennium (against the German legislation of the time).
Is it desirable that women should have the same positions as men?
Yes!
Is it desirable that women and men should be allowed to kill equally?
Yes and no.
A feminist foreign policy would not necessarily be pacifist, but it would be based on different concepts of conflict and peace, security and prevention than has been customary up to now.
And first of all, a truly feminist "reconstruction" of the Bundeswehr would probably ask about the connection between certain images of masculinity and the right-wing radicalism rampant in many barracks, instead of trusting that a higher proportion of women would automatically civilize an army.
But such structural meanings are on a completely different level than an individualized, and as such also legitimate, principle of equality.
Does every woman have to clean her toilet herself?
After all, there is still the signal effect and the role model character, it is usually said: The 29 female board members pave the way for others!
But one must not overlook the fact that in the shadow of everyone who goes ahead there is a whole troop of invisible (and again underpaid) helpers who are recruited for care activities, child-rearing, cooking, washing clothes and cleaning.
Again, it is difficult to address privileges without envious of "career women" what is theirs as much as men.
Why shouldn't women let someone else pick up their costumes from the dry cleaner?
Does every woman have to clean her toilet herself?
Hardly likely.
Nevertheless, the suspicion remains that the high prestige of the executive job is directly related to the devaluation around everyday life, house and body.
These two areas of life and work and the social recognition they receive are complementary.
Feeding, nourishing and wiping secretions - all the basic activities centered on the inevitable fact that we are all corporeal beings - are not highly regarded in our society and not very popular financially.
And here at the latest, of course, we are no longer just talking about the (lack of) equal opportunities for women, but also for men.
After all, most men never get into the orbit of executive boards (or just to empty the trash can).
Hauling, cleaning, repairing.
All of the activities mentioned are valuable and honorable.
But are they also paid decently, and are their employment relationships always fairly regulated?
And are they "free", that is, chosen under the conditions of equal opportunities?
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Icon: Spiegel PlusIcon: Spiegel Plus Suddenly for the women's quota: This led to a change of opinion at the Union
I once studied philosophy in Frankfurt am Main and just looked at my alma mater about the women's quota.
Of the 16 regular and associate professors, 16 are men.
There were at least two female professors in the 1990s;
today's female students, on the other hand, cannot hear a lecture from a female philosopher!
Small consolation: after all, all five secretariats in the department are occupied by women (there is only a man again in the office).
None of the 16 professors does not have a German name.
Probably not even among the students the proportion of those with a migration background corresponds to the proportion in the population.
It would be so important, absolutely essential, that everyone who wants to be able to participate in the public interpretation of the world could really take part;
in planning cities, in writing and discussing books, in speaking the law in our courts.
The praise of diversity that has often been heard in the past few days is almost irritating: how valuable it would be if company boards were to be enriched with the perspective of women.
And how much richer would all the other areas of society be if genders and origins, competencies and perspectives were to exchange more freely, constructively rubbed against each other everywhere, argued on an equal footing, of course mixed?
So many other fields of (in) equality of opportunity have to be worked on, otherwise the quota regulation for the board members will be the same as the clapping for the underpaid nurses in the corona crisis.
What at first sounds like recognition, echoes like a slap in the face.
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