“We are putting an end to women-free boardrooms at large companies,” said Franziska Giffey, the minister for women and families, who described the decision as a “historic breakthrough.”
Jutta Allmendinger, president of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, said the decision was “historic.”
Germany lags several major economies when it comes to the proportion of senior executive positions held by women. According to the Swedish-German Allbright Foundation, a nonprofit, women make up just 12.8% of the management boards of Germany’s 30 largest listed companies.
By comparison, women have been hired for 28.6% of the senior leadership roles at leading companies in the United States, 24.9% in Sweden, 24.5% in Britain and 22.2% in France.
According to Allmendinger, the decision to introduce a quota follows decades of lobbying by women in Germany on issues pertaining to gender equality in the workplace. “A long stalemate has finally been broken, when leading conservatives started to support the reform, thanks to the tireless efforts and pressure of many women and networks,” she told CNN Business.
Over the past few months, women from business, civil society, academia and the arts engaged in a coordinated campaign to push for the legislation, including through social media and the hashtag #jetztreichts and #ichwill, meaning Enough is Enough and I Want.
“Despite our success, we still have a lot to do,” Allmendinger said, pointing to the need to enhance diversity more broadly in governing bodies and tackle structural inequalities in the tax system that she said favor male breadwinners. “The gender issue is just one important dimension,” she added.
Germany adopted mandatory quotas for supervisory boards in 2015, with the effect that women now account for 36% of the non-executive board roles at large companies, according to the European Institute for Gender Equality. Under the country’s corporate governance system, supervisory boards oversee management boards but do not make decisions involving day-to-day operations.
Five other EU countries — Belgium, France, Italy, Austria and Portugal — have adopted mandatory gender quotas for the boards of large listed companies.
Norway was the first country in the world to legislate gender quotas for corporate boards, requiring that women fill 40% of board seats.
— Stephanie Halasz contributed reporting.
