It is correct that the state requires listed companies to fill board positions with women. But it would have been better to have a quota for women that actually deserves its name.
A comment by Sabine Henkel, ARD capital studio
The quota is coming, tweets Olaf Scholz, and the usual suspicious opponents of the quota have a pulse. But calm down, calm down. What Scholz and the SPD were able to wrest from the coalition partners CDU and CSU is nothing more than a quota. In bureaucratic terms: a minimum participation of women in companies if they are listed and subject to co-determination. And in normal language: In certain large companies, a woman will soon have to be on the board of directors. A! In words: one! Now that’s really not worth any fuss.
Voluntariness doesn’t work
Admittedly, it is a paradigm shift. The state requires companies to have women on company boards. This has never happened before, not in Germany. Seen this way: good. But that’s not a quota, because such a quota would stipulate a percentage, i.e. 30 or 40, ideally 50 percent of all board members must be women.
There is either a lack of courage or will to do this, or simply the realization that this is necessary. Whatever: one is as bitter as the other. Because it is well known that voluntariness does not work – in the last few years hardly anything has changed in the carpet days of large companies. Men are in charge, they decide. Thomas usually prefers to support Thomas, Frank supports Frank.
Her argument: there are not enough qualified women. The fact that studies have long since refuted this and that other countries have long known better is stubbornly ignored. That is why the proportion of women in management positions in Germany is still at the level of a developing country. In the land of poets and thinkers, which, besides being noticed, could also be renamed.
Mixed teams are more successful
The Boston Consulting Group recently demonstrated that companies with mixed management teams – men and women – achieve better profits. So it’s not just about the advancement and participation of women, but also about corporate profits. Women bring in different qualities than men. The backwardness of the German corporate culture shows that this has still not got around enough and has not had consequences.
Of the 70 companies that are affected by the law for equal participation, 30 have no women on their boards. That shouldn’t be anymore. If the Bundestag approves what is to be assumed, something will change – but not much. Women will be a little involved, they will be a little involved, they will not make decisions because one alone cannot do anything against the male board members. Hopefully, once again, companies will find out on their own that more woman power would be good for them. Or that there will finally be a quota that deserves the name.
