Status: 07.03.2023 8:27 a.m
Furthermore, female executives are significantly underrepresented in German companies. This emerges from a current evaluation by the credit agency Schufa. There are big differences by industry.
Women are still a minority in the executive floors in Germany. This is confirmed by a study by Schufa as of February 2023. The credit agency evaluated around 4.5 million companies from their database, of which 1.7 million are partnerships and corporations, and 2.8 million sole proprietorships. These include tradesmen and freelancers.
Only slow changes
Furthermore, there seems to be only sluggish change in the rise of women to the executive floors of companies in Germany. According to the Schufa data, only 20 percent of the companies in partnerships and corporations have at least one member of the management team female.
“At the current rate, we would have to wait until 2070, until half of all German companies have a woman in the first management level,” said Schufa boss Tanja Birkholz to the dpa-AFX news agency.
Starting a business easier than promotion?
According to Schufa data, it is still easier for women to become their own boss – i.e. to start their own company – than to rise to the executive floor in a company: around 30.8 percent of all tradespeople and freelancers are women.
According to Schufa, in 26.9 percent of the 4.5 million companies there is at least one woman on the management board, on the board or as the owner. In the previous year, this rate was 26.4 percent.
Construction industry most “male”
As far as the proportion of women in management is concerned, companies in Germany differ significantly by sector. In the veterinary sector, for example, the proportion of companies with at least one manager on the top floor is 66.1 percent, in the clothing industry it is 62.7 percent, in social services 59.8 percent and in the health sector 57.8 percent. In contrast, only 6.5 percent of the companies in the brewing industry have at least one woman in the top floor.
The results of the Schufa study are consistent with similar current studies on the proportion of women in the management floors of listed German companies. According to an evaluation by the “Fidar” initiative, the proportion of women in management at the 160 companies from the German stock market indices such as DAX or MDAX is only 6.5 percent.