ANALYSIS-German boards race to appoint women to escape quota

Marilyn Gerlach and Sarah Marsh – Thomson Reuters Foundation TrustLaw – Wednesday, 13 July, 2011 (originally published 11 July)

The European Union has been consulting on whether companies should be required to follow women quotas

Labour Minister Ursula von der Leyen (L) and Families Minister Kristina Schroeder (C) at a meeting in Berlin to promote women leadership in commerce on 30/3/2011. The banner reads 'Top level talks on how to promote women in leadership. Image: REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

FRANKFURT/BERLIN, July 11 (Reuters) – German firms, lagging European peers in appointing women to board posts, have stepped up their efforts in hopes of averting legal quotas as a campaign to smash the glass ceiling gains momentum.

Deutsche Telekom <DTEGn.DE> and SolarWorld each appointed female executives last week, in moves noteworthy for a country where no woman was appointed to the management board of a blue-chip firm until 2008.

While the leader of Europe’s largest economy is a woman, just 3.2 percent of executives at the top 200 firms were female last year, according to think tank DIW.

By contrast, some European countries, such as Norway, France and Spain, legally require top listed companies to ensure at least a third of top management is female. . .

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