Veteran feminists rubbed their eyes in astonishment in mid-June 2010 when suddenly the Age of Women came upon them. The business newspaper Handelsblatt was searching for tomorrow’s top women for Germany, the Financial Times Deutschland then proclaimed the “Age of Women”, and the magazine Capital even carried a cover story entitled “Der Chef trägt Prada” (The boss wears Prada). Human resources heads desperately seeking suitable women for positions on boards were cited, as were chairmen of supervisory boards hunting for suitable female candidates for the highest bodies in shareholding companies. Managers were reacting unusually positively to female applicants. And women were also to be heard mutually encouraging one another to finally break through that “glass ceiling”, which latter had so far prevented capable women employees from becoming managers. Women wherever you turned. At Siemens this summer, Brigitte Ederer will be the second woman, after Barbara Kux, to join the Board. The software company SAP also recently appointed a woman, Angelika Dammann, to the Board. For several weeks now, Regine Stachelhaus has been enhancing the Board of the energy concern E.ON. And the leading law firm Hengeler elected Daniela Favoccia to the top level of the company, as Managing Partner.
MORE WOMEN AT THE TOP– WITH AND WITHOUT A QUOTA
The German economy is becoming more female, of that there can be no doubt. In January, the Deutsche Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (German Institute for Economic Research) had lamented that the percentage of women in managerial positions in German companies was still declining. Today there can be no question of that anymore. In spring, Telekom was the first Dax-company to decide to introduce a women’s quota in the company. Other companies – like Deutsche Post – may avoid that provocative term quota, but they also want to increase the percentage of women at all levels of business operations to a figure of about 30%. Even the federal government’s Corporate Governance Commission is advising the country’s companies to significantly raise their proportion of women. A quota for women on supervisory boards? When Norway introduced just that several years ago, the German economy rejected the idea out of hand. Meantime the group of nay-sayers has shrunk.
SUCCESS WITH MIXED TEAMS MEASURABLY GREATER
What positions on boards are to shareholding companies, daughters and advisory councils are to family-owned businesses. Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller has been managing the machine tool company Trumpf for a number of years now. Simone Bagel-Trah, a representative of the Henkel family, has been Chair of the Supervisory Board of the Dusseldorf washing power and consumer goods company since last year and thus one of Germany’s most powerful women.
Have they all become feminists? Of course not. There are a few sound economic reasons for trying to attract women into business: many international companies meantime believe that they are more successful if women are clearly represented at all levels. And not only because women are one of the largest customer groups. A company that does not just rely on classical business hierarchies, career-steeled managers and the usual thought patterns is destined to succeed better on the market. Mixed teams work more efficiently than homogenous ones. And women come to terms more easily with the new forms of work demanded by changing teams than men, who have become all too adjusted to a classical concept of a career within a company. This has been repeatedly shown by different studies.
German companies have an additional problem. There is simply less young talent available, and because there are less well-qualified young people to choose from, companies are looking at those groups of the population who have been badly neglected in classical personnel programmes. Women for example, and migrants. By comparison, the percentage of women working in Germany is still relatively low. Meantime maybe about two thirds of all women between the age of 15 and 65 are working, but the rate among men is 80%. So if it is a matter of mobilising more people for the labour market, then obviously the focus should be on women. That is where the greatest potential lies, especially among the well-educated women. Yet among them, the desire to work is much weaker than in other European states. Of course this has to do with the image of the family in Germany, with the availability of child care – and with the chances for promotion. So far, the supply of well-educated and ambitious men has been sufficient.
IN FUTURE COMPANIES WILL BE DEPENDENT ON WOMEN
When looking for new staff, the tendency of superiors to opt for people similar to themselves has meant an initial advantage for men in the German economy. Men are more similar to their bosses than women, as long as the positions of boss are mainly in the hands of men. As a result, men have had the better chances of getting jobs and being promoted.
But now the first generations are coming onto the labour market for which this kind of recruitment no longer functions. There are too few well-educated men, and meantime many human resources departments are being managed by women. Companies are dependent on women. And if women are to identify with the company, the latter must create a climate in which women can justifiably expect to be promoted. This problem is destined to become more acute in the coming low-birth-rate years. As a result, heads of boards are now talking intelligently and objectively about in-company child care, and they no longer cringe when their trainees think out loud about the work-life-balance.
Sociologists have shown that people always feel they are in a minority when they make up less than 30% of a particular group. As a rule, minorities are less self-confident than the majority. They are more easily satisfied and accept that their abilities and their potential are underestimated. So companies are trying to prepare for the demographic change and (gradually) bring the percentage of women at all levels of the hierarchy up above 30%.
So do we therefore need another women’s quota, given that everything is so in favour of women? Federal Minister of Family Affairs Kristina Schröder says that for her a quota is the “ultima ratio”, the last tool if nothing else works. A quota would accelerate the process, but it is not necessary – in time, the desired effects will come about anyway. It will just take a bit longer. Some companies do not want to wait that long. At Telekom, people are not only thinking about a women’s quota. Thomas Sattelberger of Human Resources believes that thought has also to be given to how to encourage very promising migrants to start a career at Telekom. Will that mean another quota? Probably not. But anyway, as of a percentage of about 30%, one feels like a relevant staff group.
