BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - Women have made a significant leap forward in the top echelons of German business, according to a study. For the first time, there are more corporations with a female manager on the board (94) than companies without a woman on the board (66) among the 160 listed companies in the Dax family, according to the non-profit Allbright Foundation. 37 percent of the new board positions filled between September 2022 and September 2023 went to female managers.

According to the data, the proportion of women in the top echelons of the 160 companies rose by just over 3 percentage points to 17.4 percent (as of September 1). This is the second strongest increase in the course of a year since the start of the evaluation in 2016. In total, 121 women sat opposite 574 men on the executive boards.

The increase was strongest among the 50 medium-sized companies in the MDax, with a good 5 percentage points to a female share of 16.6 percent. Many companies had appointed a female executive to the board for the first time. The increase in smaller companies listed on the SDax was significantly lower, at 1.9 percentage points to 12.3 percent.

Corporations lag behind in international comparison

The highest proportion of female top managers was again in the 40 companies in Germany's top league, at 23.2 percent (up 3 percentage points). Only at the two Dax companies Adidas and Porsche Holding was the executive board a purely male domain as of the reporting date, according to the data. In an international comparison, however, Germany continues to lag behind. In the 40 largest U.S. stock corporations, the proportion of female executives on the top floor was most recently 32.6 percent, according to the data, followed by the United Kingdom (29.5 percent), France (27.9 percent) and Sweden (27.2 percent).

"We need a substantial proportion of women on boards if we want to see a different dynamic in companies overall," argued Allbright Foundation executive directors Wiebke Ankersen and Christian Berg. American companies, they said, are much further ahead and are currently the more attractive employers. "But we also urgently need more women in the decisive positions of board or supervisory board chairpersons so that equal opportunities are sustainably anchored in the German economy," Ankersen and Berg warned.

Highest positions of power still the domain of men

The highest positions of power at the 160 companies are still held almost exclusively by men. Only seven women were at the top of the board as of the reporting date, including Helen Giza at dialysis specialist Fresenius Medical Care

and Merck CEO Belén Garijo. Six women were chairmen of the Supervisory Board - two fewer than a year earlier.

Companies listed on the stock exchange and subject to equal codetermination with more than 2,000 employees and more than three board members must ensure that at least one woman is on the board when new appointments are made. This will apply to new appointments from August 1, 2022. For supervisory boards, a law that has already been in force since 2015 stipulates a 30 percent quota for women for the 100 or so largest companies listed on the stock exchange and subject to co-determination.

The German-Swedish Allbright Foundation campaigns for more women and diversity in business leadership positions./mar/DP/zb