At least one woman must serve on the management board of large listed companies with more than three members
The German government wants to ensure more women in the boardrooms of large companies. The cabinet passed a draft law on Wednesday, according to which at least one woman must sit on the boards of listed companies with equal co-determination with more than three members.
There are even stricter rules for companies with a majority stake in the German federal government: In general, if there are more than two members of the management team, there should be at least one woman.
In addition, companies will in future have to give special reasons if they plan for the executive board, the two top management levels below the executive board and the supervisory board without women. The sanctions for breaches of reporting obligations are to be tightened.
According to Reuters, according to Reuters, in the draft law available to the news agency according to its own information, this minimum participation requirement is not a management board quota in the strict sense of the word. The aspired equal participation of women in management positions can only be achieved if women are represented on the board at all.
30 percent applies to supervisory boards
At the 105 listed companies in Germany with equal co-determination, the proportion of women on the executive boards had risen to 11.5 percent by November 2020, according to the draft law. A quota of women of at least 30 percent already applies to the supervisory boards of these companies, which was achieved in 2017 and was most recently 35.2 percent. In contrast, only targets have to be set for board level. According to the draft law, almost 70 percent of the companies that are obliged to do so have no or zero women on the board as a target. Therefore, companies that do not fall under the new quota for women on board members must justify the target of zero in future.
According to a study, almost half of the listed German companies (44 percent), for whose board members the quota for women is to apply in the future, currently have no manager on the executive committee. According to the evaluation of the organization Fidar (women on the supervisory boards), 73 corporations would be affected, 32 of them do not have a female manager on the top floor. There is already a quota of women on supervisory boards: from a certain size – usually from 2,000 employees – 30 percent of the supervisory board positions should be occupied by women.
