The German savings banks remain firmly in male hands. On June 30, 2021, of the 911 board members of the 373 institutes, just 53 were female, shows a study by the analysis company Barkow Consulting, which is available to the SZ. This corresponds to a quota of women of 5.82 percent. In contrast, 63 percent of all employees are female. Compared to the previous quarter, the proportion of women on executive boards has even worsened slightly.
Barkow Consulting evaluated the figures against the background of the Management Positions Act II, which is to come into force by the end of this year. According to this, the federal government obliges companies with more than 2000 employees and at least four board members that one of them must be a woman in the future. 66 companies are currently subject to these conditions. Of these, 24 are without women on the board. For companies in which the federal government holds a majority, the law applies in a more stringent form: With three or more board members, one board member must be female. 94 companies are affected. And finally, for corporations under public law, a minimum participation of one woman applies from two board members. Among other things, around 155 social security agencies are affected here.
However, the new law does not apply to savings banks, even though they are public institutions. This is due to the fact that they are not owned by the federal government, but are under municipal sponsorship. “If you look at the figures on the proportion of women on the Sparkasse board, it becomes clear that a legal regulation would also be appropriate here,” says corporate governance expert Wolfgang Schnorr, who analyzed the figures for Barkow Consulting. These are sobering.
In the Volksbank and Raiffeisenbanken, too, only 4.4 percent of the board members are women
If the savings banks were to be included in the regulation for corporations under public law, the bill would look very different. 372 of the 373 savings banks currently have a board of directors with at least two members. This would mean that all but one of the savings banks would fall under the law. Of these 372 savings banks, 49 have at least one woman on the management board, but 323 do not. If a woman were to join each of these board members, the proportion of women in the savings bank camp would rise from 5.82 to 41.27 percent.
“With the inclusion of the savings banks in the new set of rules, almost parity would have been created in the executive bodies,” says Schnorr. He considers it a failure that the savings banks have not been included in the regulation for corporations under public law. The federal government and the states would have the political authority to change the legal situation accordingly.
The second important pillar of the branch banks in Germany, the Volksbank and Raiffeisenbank, also proves to be a pure male bastion. Since they are organized as a cooperative, they are also not subject to any statutory regulations regarding a quota for women. 57 percent of all employees in the 839 Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken were women at the end of 2020. The rate on the executive boards is 4.4 percent – for every 1905 men there are 88 women. The banking newsletter “Finanz-Szene” searched through the annual reports of all institutes and found that there are more men with the first name Thomas on executive boards – namely 92 – than women overall.