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Angela Merkel

New German law: A woman's place should be on corporate boards

Katharina Wecker
Special for USA TODAY
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, and German Minister of Family Affairs Manuela Schwesig talk during a session of Parliament in Berlin on  Friday, March 6, 2015.

BERLIN — Germany's new law guaranteeing women a set amount of seats on corporate boards doesn't have businesswomen popping the Champagne just yet.

The new quotas that became law Friday are designed to boost the ranks of women in corporate leadership positions, but they may do little to change corporate culture, society or a lack of skills that some critics say hinder women in the first place.

Taking a page from Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, many female German managers and business experts don't want quotas to succeed, but instead stress that women need to "lean in" and demand better work conditions to achieve gender balance in corporations.

Most of all, Germany's work culture must change, they add.

"I don't think that the quota will have any effect," said Marie-Christine Ostermann, managing partner of the food wholesale company Rullko, based in Hamm, in western Germany. "It's shop-window politics. The quota doesn't tackle the cause of why so few women are in leadership positions."

The new law was the result of a years-long fight. It requires having women comprise 30% of the boards of publicly listed companies by 2016.

Even though German Chancellor Angela Merkel runs the world's third-largest economy, there are few female executives in major German companies. Women make up 5.4% of the 200 top companies' executive boards.

In the United States, among Fortune 500 companies, women held 19% of board seats last year — up from 16.4% in 2011, according to the advocacy group 2020 Women on Boards.

German Family Minister Manuela Schwesig called the new law a "historic step." Other European countries have been considering similar measures since Norway passed its landmark law a decade ago.

Still, many German businesswomen were significantly less enthusiastic. Only 27% of women in leadership positions support the women's quota, according to a November survey of 150 female top managers by Baumann Consulting.

Ostermann and other businesswomen said the reason few women occupy top management positions in Germany is not because men bar them from the jobs, but because few women have the skills to lead companies.

"Many women prefer to study social sciences, languages or arts but not the kind of professions that would qualify them for a position in a supervisory board," said Frauke Christiansen, a German management consultant. "Only 10% of students in technical or engineering degree programs are female."

As a result, search committees for supervisory boards want to fill vacant positions with qualified women but can't.

"I'm sitting on several boards," Ostermann said. "Many boards are searching for suitable female board members but can't find any because there are almost none."

Christiansen regretted that many stereotypical explanations for the absence of women in corner offices in Germany were valid. She believes many women don't pursue careers because they shy away from conflict, and instead need to be more confident and show more drive to succeed.

A woman stands surrounded by men at the chancellery in Berlin on November 9, 2011. Deputies at the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) voted on March 5, 2015, for the introduction of compulsory quota for women in the supervisory boards of 108 companies from the year 2016.

"Men are more likely to regard power games as a sports competition," she said. "Women are bored by games but shoot themselves in the foot by not participating in them."

"Men might have doubts, too, but they don't show it," she added. "They just go for it and try it out. Women should do the same."

Another reason women may be underrepresented in leadership positions is Germany lacks a framework to balance personal and family lives and careers, several female corporate leaders said.

Since 2013, for instance, German parents are legally entitled to day care for children older than 1 year old. But there are not yet enough places for every child.

"The government has to invest much more in day care and all-day schooling," Ostermann said. "Parents need to know that their kids are being taken care of the whole day, so that it becomes normal that both parents work full time."

Monika Schulz-Strelow, president of the German activist group Women on Boards — known by its German acronym FidAR — said she reluctantly supported the quotas, which she thought were well intended but insufficient. They wouldn't address the fundamental obstacles to women succeeding in Germany, including narrow-minded German male chief executives loath to change their approach to recruiting talent, she said.

"FidAR is not keen on quotas, but we see it as the only instrument that works for us in Germany," Schulz-Strelow said. "We still have a very conservative structure in the upper echelons of management, which is not very international, nor inclusive of different backgrounds."

FidAR wants German companies to change their culture, including policies that are friendlier to family life, Schulz-Strelow said. Christiansen raised the same concerns.

"Many important meetings take place in the evenings and on weekends, making it difficult for parents to attend," Christiansen said. "Parents should more actively demand meetings to take place in the core business hours."

Changing German corporate culture won't be easy. In Germany, working moms are called "Rabenmutter" (raven mother), a derogatory term for bad mothers.

"We have an old-fashioned mentality in Germany," Ostermann said. "Many people still think that the husband goes to work and the wife stays at home to take care of the children. If a man takes parental leave, he often hears stupid comments about it."

Even women tend to be harsh toward lifestyle choices, Christiansen said. Full-time mothers denigrate working moms for neglecting their children, while career women routinely say full-time mothers are squandering their talents. "I would wish for more tolerance," Christiansen said.

Ostermann agreed. Germans need to become more accepting of father and mothers who want to pursue careers.

"This is far more important than a women's quota," she said.

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