Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/149809 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Citation: 
[Journal:] DIW Economic Bulletin [ISSN:] 2192-7219 [Volume:] 7 [Issue:] 1/2 [Publisher:] Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW) [Place:] Berlin [Year:] 2017 [Pages:] 3-15
Publisher: 
Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin
Abstract: 
The gender quota for supervisory boards that has been mandatory since January 2016 has shown an initial impact. According to DIW Berlin's Women Executives Barometer, at the end of 2016, there were more women on the supervisory boards of the 106 companies subject to the statutory quota than one year before. Their proportion increased by a solid four percentage points to more than 27 percent. And in the other groups of companies studied, the number of female supervisory board members also rose. However, the calculations based on the top 200 companies also showed that in companies in which the supervisory board already consisted of one-third women, the proportion hardly increased or did not increase at all. The gap between supervisory and executive boards has also widened because growth in the latter has flattened. Women represent only 6,5 percent of the executives at companies subject to the quota - even fewer than in the DAX 30 (11 percent) and the average of the 200 highest performing companies in Germany (eight percent). In companies with government-owned shares, the momentum has decreased significantly - they run the risk of losing their function as role models. To forestall a tightening of the law, companies should ensure more balanced gender representation on all executive levels.
Subjects: 
corporate boards
board composition
boards of directors
board diversity
Europe
women directors
gender equality
gender quota
Germany
management
private companies
public companies
supervisory boards
executive boards
CEOs
women
JEL: 
D22
J16
J59
J78
L21
L32
M14
M51
Document Type: 
Article

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