Adidas boss Kasper Rorsted does not believe in a statutory quota of women for company boards. “The statutory quota will not help us,” he told the “Bild” newspaper on Tuesday, saying that this was “not a sustainable solution”. If a company wants a diverse management team, that also works, “not overnight, but it works”.
Germany's government recently launched a draft law aimed at improving the participation of women in leadership positions in the private and public sectors. According to this, it is envisaged that on executive boards of listed companies with equal co-determination that have more than three members, at least one member must be a woman and one member a man.
Adidas has a board of six members – including one woman.
For Rorsted, the quota for women is not compatible with the performance principle he lives by. “I have always said to myself that if I belong to a minority, I would like to have the achievement principle,” he told the “Bild” newspaper. “The consequence of performance is that everyone is treated equally.” If someone were to tell him that he became a boss because he was a Dane, that would leave him with a “aftertaste”.
Google has to pay back
The subject of possible discrimination is of course not a purely European one. In the USA, for example, discrimination against certain groups has just led to wages being paid in the millions.
Specifically, the US Internet giant Google has to pay 3.8 million dollars (3.14 million euros) after a settlement because of underpaid and disadvantages for women and Asians. US Department of Labor investigators found that Google had temporarily underpaid 2,783 women in its software engineering group from 2014 to 2017. In addition, women and Asian applicants were disadvantaged in the 2017 financial year in job advertisements in San Francisco and Kirkland.
The settlement includes a reimbursement of $ 2.6 million (2.15 million euros) to approximately 5,500 employees and applicants and calls for a review of the hiring and salary practices at Google.
The company said it was happy to have the matter resolved.
