FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - There are still very few women in the top echelons of German family businesses. According to a study by the non-profit Allbright Foundation, the proportion of female managers in the 100 family businesses with the highest turnover at the beginning of March 2024 was only 12.6 percent. This means that although the proportion of women has increased by four percentage points since the last survey two years ago, it remains well below that of the 160 companies in the DAX family, where it averages 19 percent. "If family businesses want to remain attractive employers, it is high time," commented the managing directors of the Allbright Foundation, Wiebke Ankersen and Christian Berg, with regard to the study results.
"The owners of the 100 largest family businesses are only now beginning to give the issue strategic priority," they said in the study published on Tuesday. Equal opportunities and diversity in management, on the other hand, have been on the agenda of family-owned companies for years - at 23.7 percent, the proportion of women on the management boards of the 40 DAX heavyweights is almost twice as high as the proportion in family-owned companies.
The greater the transparency of the company and the influence of non-family players, the higher the proportion of women on the management board. At 19.6%, the proportion of women in family-owned companies listed on the stock exchange, such as Volkswagen, Henkel or Merck, is almost twice as high as in family-owned companies not listed on the stock exchange (10.6%). "The tradition-bound private family businesses have so far found it difficult to get more women into management ? be it in active management or on supervisory bodies," explained Ankersen and Berg.
Just under half of the companies have at least one woman in management. However, there are still some family businesses with large management teams in which not a single woman can be found - including Fressnapf, the Schwarz Group and Diehl. Powerful management positions within the owner family are still entrusted to men - only two of the large family businesses have women at the top of the management board.
Overall, according to the Allbright Foundation, the average management board member was not very diverse. According to the study, 87.4 percent of management board members were male, 89 percent were German, around half (49 percent) had a business degree and one in fifteen managing directors was called Stefan. The typical managing director also tends to demand people who are very similar to him. "The upcoming generational change in many business families is an opportunity to quickly bring significantly more women into management," said Ankersen and Berg.
The German-Swedish Allbright Foundation campaigns for more women and diversity in management positions in business./utz/DP/zb
