English Unlimited HAK/HUM 4/5, Schulbuch mit Audio-CD und CD-ROM (mit Handelskorrespondenz)

206 Activities Unit 6, exercise 11 Student C Too many suits And not nearly enough skirts in the boardrooms A study found that in 2010 women held only 3.2% of all executive board seats in Germany’s 200 biggest non-financial firms. In the largest companies their share was even smaller. Financial institutions and insurance companies, where at least half of all employees are female, did no better than the rest, and state-owned companies were only slightly ahead. The glass ceiling , like everything else in Germany, is pretty solid.  Across Europe the proportion of women on company boards averages around 10%, though with large variations: from less than 1% in Portugal to 40% in Norway, thanks to that country’s much-cited quota system . America, at 16%, does somewhat better than the European average, and most emerging markets do less well. Numbers everywhere have barely moved over the past decade.  Among the Fortune 500* companies only about 15% of the most senior managers and only 3% of the CEOs were women. Female bosses get more attention than their male colleagues precisely because women are still so rare at the top of large companies.  It is not that companies refuse to recruit or promote women. In most rich countries roughly half the new intake of graduates for most professional and managerial posts is female, and some of the women do move up. However, companies have long been saying that when they look for potential leaders “there are no women” in the pipeline . That may have been true 20 or even ten years ago, but by now substantial numbers of women have arrived in middle management and even in the ‘ marzipan layer ’ (just below the icing) from which future top executives are recruited. Why do so few get any further?  One reason is that female managers tend to work in so-called functional specialities (such as HR ) rather than in areas that are the main hunting ground for the very top but often involve extensive travel and unsocial hours .  More importantly, boards have traditionally been made up of white middle-aged males of similar backgrounds who are comfortable with each other and recruit new colleagues in their own image. Women, even if they can be found, have a different style and are more visible, so if something goes wrong everyone notices.  Besides, women themselves are often reluctant to put themselves forward for promotion. They have few female role models to look up to. Men also benefit from informal networks that often involve socialising after hours and talking about sport.  Big companies like Deloitte, which lost too many valuable female employees, have changed their working practices and are now among the most considerate employers of women. Among other things, this usually involves offering a flexible work environment, with the emphasis on getting the job done rather than being present.  Different companies are adopting different strategies. Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, announced in September that it will double the money it spends with women-owned businesses, train women around the world and push suppliers to use more women. Shell is running a global career- development programme for talented women within the organisation and has set itself a long-term target of 20% for women in the company’s senior executive ranks.  The companies that are taking action are hardly doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. The main argument now being put forward is that there is a business case for having more women in senior positions. At its most basic, this says that since women make up 50% of the population and hence 50% of the talent, it would be absurdly wasteful to ignore themwhen so many businesses struggle to fill high-powered jobs – all the more so as women are now generally better educated than men. * Fortune 500 : an annual list of the 500 largest companies in the United States, published by Fortune magazine Disproportionate Women on corporate boards % of total, September 2011 United States France Sweden Norway Britain China Brazil India Russia Spain Germany 0 10 20 30 40 Sources: McKinsey; Catalyst Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv