According to a study, family-run companies continue to lack female managers. The generational change now offers an opportunity for change.
Very 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 strategic priority,” said the study that has now been published. 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 stock market heavyweights of the DAX is 23.7 percent, almost twice as high as the proportion in family businesses.
More transparency could help
The higher the transparency of the company and the influence of non-family actors, the higher the proportion of women in management. In listed family businesses, such as Volkswagen, Henkel or Merck, the proportion of women is 19.6 percent, almost twice as high as that of non-listed family businesses (10.6 percent). “Traditional private family businesses have so far found it difficult to get more women into leadership – be it in active management or in the 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 Group and 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.
Allbright: Management on average not very diverse
Overall, according to the Allbright Foundation, the average board member was not very diverse. Accordingly, 87.4 percent of the management members were male, 89 percent were German, around half (49 percent) had a degree in economics and one in fifteen managing directors was called Stefan.
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.
Source: Stern
