Germany: draft legislation adopted for female quotas at corporate executive level

Draft legislation imposing a female quota at corporate executive level was adopted as planned (c.f. article No. 12239) on 06 January, during the Council of Ministers first meeting of 2021. The draft law will be put to a Bundestag vote in the coming weeks. “We can show that Germany is on the way to becoming a modern, forward-looking society,” Social Democratic Family Minister Franziska Giffey stated to the press, who together with her colleague Christine Lambrecht (SPD) brought the text. The draft provides that large listed companies and those subject to co-determination legislation, as well as large state-controlled companies, will be obliged to have at least 30% females at their executive helm. No deadline has been set for implementation of the measures so the quota will simply be applied when positions are up for renewal. These quotas should help Germany to catch up internationally. To date, no female heads a company listed on the German DAX (stock market index), and only 15% of executive positions in the 160 companies that could come under the new legislation, are currently held by women. This percentage falls to 9.3% (2019) for the economy as a whole (6.3% in 2015). While the German DIW economic research institute has welcomed the legislation it considers it insufficient, saying that the country continues to evolve in this area at a ‘snail’s pace’.