The proportion of women in the management levels of German family businesses is increasing slightly. But it is still much lower than in the main listed companies.
Only a few women still make it to the top levels of German family businesses. According to a study by the non-profit Allbright Foundation, the proportion of female managers in the 100 family companies with the highest sales was only 12.6 percent at the beginning of March 2024. This means that the proportion of women has increased by four percentage points since the last survey two years ago, but remains significantly below that of the 160 companies in the DAX family, where it is an average of 19 percent.
“If family businesses want to remain attractive employers, it is high time,” commented the managing directors of the Allbright Foundation, Wiebke Ankersen and Christian Berg, with a view to the study results.
“The owners of the 100 largest family businesses are only now beginning to give the issue a strategic priority,” the study says. Equal opportunities and diversity in management have been on the agenda of listed companies for years. The proportion of women on the boards of the 40 DAX stock market heavyweights is 23.7 percent, almost twice as high as the proportion in family businesses.
Powerful ones leading position often reserved for men
The study authors found that the greater the transparency of the company and the influence of non-family actors, the higher the proportion of women in management. “Traditional private family businesses have so far found it difficult to get more women into leadership, be it in active management or in control committees,” explained Ankersen and Berg.
Almost half of the companies have at least one woman on management. However, there are still some family businesses with large management teams in which not a single woman can be found – including Fressnapf, the Schwarz retail group (Lidl, Kaufland) and the aerospace technology and armaments manufacturer Diehl. Powerful leadership positions within the owning family would continue to be entrusted to men – only two of the large family businesses had women at the top of the management team.
Little diversity
Overall, according to the Allbright Foundation, the average board member does not appear to be very diverse. According to this, 87.4 percent of the managers in the management board were male, 89 percent were German, and around half (49 percent) had completed a business degree. The typical CEO also tends to promote people who are very similar to him. “The upcoming generational change in many business families is an opportunity to quickly bring significantly more women into management,” said Ankersen and Berg.
The German-Swedish Allbright Foundation advocates for more women and diversity in management positions in business.
The importance of family businesses
According to the Family Business Foundation, 90 percent of all German companies are family-controlled companies. They generated 55 percent of sales and accounted for around 57 percent of all employment relationships subject to social insurance contributions.
In more than 90 percent of all family businesses, sales are less than one million euros. The Family Business Foundation points out that the German economy is characterized by many large family businesses compared to other industrialized nations. 46 percent of companies with a turnover of more than 50 million euros are family businesses.