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Federal Minister of Family Affairs Franziska Giffey (r) and Federal Minister of Justice Christine Lambrecht at the press conference after the meeting of the Federal Cabinet
Photo:
Kay Nietfeld / dpa
The federal government led by CDU, CSU and SPD wants to increase the proportion of women on executive boards with a quota.
The federal cabinet has passed a draft law according to which at least one of them must be a woman in listed companies with equal co-determination and more than three board members.
For companies with a majority stake by the federal government, there are even stricter rules: In general, if there are more than two members of the management team, there should be at least one woman.
In addition, companies will in future have to give special reasons if they plan for the executive board, the two top management levels below the executive board and the supervisory board without women.
The Union and the SPD had reached an agreement in principle on this in November, and the sanctions for violating reporting obligations are now to be tightened.
According to a study, almost half of the listed companies (44 percent), for whose board members the quota for women is to apply in the future, currently have no manager on the executive committee.
According to the evaluation of the organization Fidar (women on the supervisory boards), 73 corporations would be affected, 32 of them do not have a female manager on the top floor.
There is already a quota of women for supervisory boards: from a certain size - usually from 2000 employees - 30 percent of the supervisory board positions should be occupied by women.
"It was not easy"
Family Minister Giffey
The rule that has now been adopted for board members is, as the Reuters news agency reports, citing the draft law, not a quota in the true sense, as no specific proportion of women is stipulated.
The desired equal participation of women can only be achieved through this minimum requirement if women are represented on the board at all.
Share of women so far: 11.5 percent
In the 105 listed and at the same time co-determined companies, the proportion of women on the executive boards had risen to 11.5 percent by November 2020, according to the draft law.
According to a survey by the US personnel consultancy Russell Reynolds, however, the proportion of women is particularly poor among new and emerging corporations.
"Newcomers in the Dax and MDax even regularly pull the quotas for women down," she stated in the summer.
With the departure of Lufthansa from the Dax - after all, with 17 percent women on the board - the real estate company Deutsche Wohnen moved up without a single woman on the board.
In the MDax of the medium-sized values, on the other hand, of the 29 climbers of the past two years in the second most important German stock market index, 25 would not have had a female board member.
The two ministers responsible believe that the quota for women now decided by the federal cabinet should bring more women into management positions.
“It wasn't easy to get an agreement in the coalition.
We did it after a lot of discussion, after a lot of effort.
I'm proud of that, ”said Family Minister Franziska Giffey (SPD).
Your party friend, Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht, spoke of a good day for all the highly qualified women in Germany.
"In future, qualifications will count when filling executive board positions and not gender." The quota for women is also an important signal for young women, said Lambrecht.
"Those who qualify well, who position themselves accordingly, also get the chance that he or she deserves."
After the cabinet decision, the bill still has to go through the parliamentary procedure.
The process should be completed in this legislative period, said Giffey.
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apr / dpa / Reuters