In early March, the German parliament passed a new law that would require the largest companies in Germany to name women to 30% of seats on non-executive boards. This would increase the quota to 50% by 2018. Furthermore, many big companies in Germany have already met the quota while others severely lack representation of women on their boards. Smaller companies in Germany also have certain binding targets to increase the number of women on their boards. The quota also applies to senior leadership positions. Critics of the new law say that companies may give unqualified women positions to satisfy the requirements. On the other hand, people have said the new law does not do enough to fix the gender imbalance on boards. Norway has the best record for women since nearly 36% of board members are women. This is a stark contrast in Japan where only 3% of women are hold positions on boards but it is well known that female labor participation rate in Japan tends to be very low.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/06/news/women-boards-germany-30/index.html
7 comments:
I see efforts being made for progress, and that is what matters most for now. A tip to fellow students: don't read the sexist comments on this article.
The opposition of "unqualified women" getting the job is exactly what this law is trying to fix. Balance the playing field.
I am quite surprised this law was passed so late since Germany's Chancellor (since 2005), Angela Merkel has been a very influential and powerful person of the 21st century.
This seems to be a constant issue across all industries. It's tough because it does rise the issue, as mentioned before, of hiring unqualified women simply to meet quota and this would take away from a more qualified candidate. This system has good intentions, but does have negative implications.
Being a board member is one of the most important position in a company, and having unqualified, and inexperienced members could hurt the company. Moreover, the unqualified problem should not be considered gender specific.
I think a better solution for equal gender representation is not to have a specified amount of male to female ratio on boards, but rather a company's total workforce (minus the board for now) should be comprised of certain percentage of women and at all levels (top tier to bottom tier). In this way the problem of inexperience will be removed, and both gender will be as qualified as the other. Eventually, there should be equal representation on boards. So, the problem should be corrected from the bottom up rather than at the top.
I agree with all of the above comments. It is inspiring to see progress toward gender-equality in the workplace, but it is frankly unfair to give a position to a less-qualified individual, male or female, over a person who is more qualified. As Abby said, the system has good intentions, but there is definitely a possibility for negative implications.
This proposal seems a bit near-sighted and will likely fail due to a number of conflicts. First, the quota will likely lead to the creation of second-tier board positions simply to satisfy the legal requirements to "warm benches", defeating the purpose of elevating women in effective corporate representation, as was an argument used in discussion of various gender quota bills for governmental representation. Second, I agree with the contention that having under-qualified board members could harm firms and ultimately set back the very end goal that was trying to be achieved here. Instead, a solution with a longer view would be to provide equal-access training programs for firms in which there is under-representation of women, or enforce equal hiring statutes.
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