Study: Progress on women on executive boards at German firms stalls

Progress in increasing the number of women in senior leadership positions at Germany's largest listed companies has largely stalled, with female representation on management boards declining over the past year, according to a study published on Wednesday.

"The years-long increase in the share of women in leadership positions in the private sector has largely come to a halt," the advocacy group Women on Board (Fidar) said.

Most of the 183 companies surveyed remain "far from" achieving gender parity on their supervisory and management boards, it added.

Fidar, which regularly tracks gender representation in the leadership of publicly listed companies, said women held 37% of seats on supervisory boards as of May 2026, unchanged from a year earlier.

The share of women on management boards fell to 19.1% from 19.9% the previous year.

The study covered the 160 companies listed on Germany's DAX, MDAX and SDAX stock indexes, as well as 23 other publicly listed companies.

Germany introduced a mandatory 30% quota for women on the supervisory boards of large listed companies in 2016. Since 2022, listed companies with more than 2,000 employees whose management boards have more than three members have also been required to appoint at least one woman and one man to those boards.

Fidar President Anja Seng called for Germany's gender quota rules to be expanded, including raising the quota for supervisory boards to 40% and extending it to all listed companies. She also urged the introduction of a mandatory quota for women on management boards.