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The parties that support the majority of the German government have agreed on a bill that will introduce a requirement that at least one woman be on the boards of directors of listed German companies. Under the same bill, the details of which are not yet known, companies in which the German government has a majority stake must have at least 30 percent women at the top.
The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which is part of the grand coalition government together with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party and the Christian Social Union (CSU), She has long called on the government to work to ensure greater representation of women in business management positions, but the CDU has long been skeptical about it.
German Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht of the SPD said that “the law is a great success for women in Germany” and is not only a great social achievement, but also a great opportunity for German companies. In 2015, the government had already passed a law requiring that the supervisory bodies of large companies be made up of one third women, while also asking smaller German companies to come up with plans to increase the presence of women in companies. Management positions. However, the initiative, which was voluntary, was unsuccessful, as Franziska Giffey, Minister for Family, Elderly, Women and Youth also admitted.
However, the Green Party has criticized the bill announced by the government saying that it is not enough to require that at least one woman be a member of the company boards. Greens spokeswoman and MP Ulle Schauws said the plan could have been more ambitious and that what the government has envisioned is “the bare minimum.”
In 2013, the current president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, when she was Minister of Labor and Social Affairs of Germany, committed herself to a regulation that would favor a greater presence of women in the boards of directors, but her initiatives, to Despite initial support from Merkel, they were later thwarted by the CDU.
According to research by the Swedish-German AllBright Foundation, women in Germany currently represent only 12.8 percent of the boards of directors of listed companies. Again, according to the study, in the United Kingdom they are 24.5%, in the United States 28.6, in Sweden 24.9 and in France 22.2. In Italy, according to a 2019 study by Spencer Stuart, in the top 100 Italian companies listed on the stock exchange, the percentage of women holding executive positions was 11.9 percent and female CEOs 9.9 percent. In contrast, women with positions on boards of directors increased from 32.3 percent in 2017 to 35.8 percent in 2018, also as a result of the 2011 Gulf-Moscow law, which requires that at least a third of members of the governing bodies of companies.
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