Slowly but Surely: More Women on Executive Positions in Germany’s Big Companies

Women have long been underrepresented in executive committees in Germany. But progress is underway: the past year has seen more women on executive boards than any other previous year.

In the top 200 companies, 10.4 percent of women have held executive positions in the past year, exceeding the ten percent mark for the very first time.

The government is additionally under debate on introducing a statutory quota for executive board members if there isn’t significant progress soon, or to at least focus on companies that currently have no women in management positions.

According to researchers, adding a quota for women back in 2016 has proven successful in supervisory boards, where there are significantly more women than on executive boards. This is thanks to the quota requiring the 100 largest companies to place a minimum of 30% women on their supervisory boards.