Germany to introduce legal quotas for women on company boards

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition parties agreed on Tuesday to a draft law that would force Germany’s leading listed companies to allocate 30 per cent of the seats on non-executive boards to women from 2016 onward. The draft law would apply to listed companies which have employee representation on their supervisory boards, affecting more than 100 firms. A further 3,500 medium-sized companies would have to determine their own quota for executive and supervisory board seats, party officials said. The cabinet is expected to pass the gender law next month. Although Europe’s biggest economy has a female leader and roughly 40 per cent of the cabinet is female, women are still under-represented in business life.

Europe gender gap