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Upper house approves gender quota
Published: 21 Sep 12 16:03 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20120921-45119.html
The executive boards of Germany's top companies are set to become 40 percent female, after the upper house of the parliament, the Bundesrat, voted for a gender quota on Friday. Two conservative states supported the centre-left proposal.
- German joins EU group against women's quota - Politics (15 Sep 12)
- Women managers still rare and earning less - Business & Money (4 Sep 12)
The Bundesrat, made up of the governments of Germany's 16 states, voted on the issue on Friday.
The Christian Democratic Union state premiers of Saarland and Saxony-Anhalt surprised observers on Thursday by indicating that they would support the proposal initiated by the Social Democratic Party. They made good on their pledge at Friday's session.
The decision puts Chancellor Angela Merkel's government in a dilemma, since the governing coalition - made up of the CDU, its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) is deeply divided on the issue.
While CSU leader Horst Seehofer and Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger of the FDP are against the idea, it has long been championed by CDU Labour Minister Ursula von der Leyen.
The CDU's Family Minister Kristina Schröder has her own compromise proposal - a "flexi-quota" decided by the companies themselves. All the opposition parties - the SPD, the Greens, and the socialist Left party - are in favour of an obligatory quota.
Some CDU representatives are thought to be in favour, but they will struggle to convince the CSU and FDP factions of the coalition.
Reiner Haseloff, CDU state premier of Saxony-Anhalt, justified his decision to support the quota on Friday, saying, "Self-regulation has not worked so far, so I think it's up to the politicians," he told state broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.
The Local/DAPD/DPA/bk
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Your comments about this article:
Nuclear power shutdown, then this abomination, I 'm amazed things have held up so well. I fear that in the not too distant future, we will look wistfully upon these current economic times as the good old days.
The only reason the majority of men remain is due to the inherent bias against women by men, who pick people who look, act, and talk like themselves. And it's self-confirming. When women get to a certain level, they already know the men in charge will pass them over for another man, so they don't offer themselves for the higher position.
Women managers (as opposed to board members) often perform better than their male counterparts and reduce employee turnover. Corporations and public agencies have witnessed that trend for years.
Sometimes you just 'have to make them do it', kind of like not polluting the air, water, or treating their secretaries as personal playthings. I watched it happen.
It is about a woman who did not get the job (professor at the university), even if she had better qualifications and experience.
It is more likely to be because the ratio of female to male candidates is rather low - and this may be the result of women giving up work after having children. My sister is prime example - she gave up her job as Chief Accountant (one step down from VP Finance) after her second child because she wanted to spend time with her children. Once both children had left school, she returned to work but at a much lower level, because she then had a 12 year gap in her work experience and her skills were out of date.
However noble the intention, positive discrimination for any group is just discrimination.
@jg: The anecdote about your sister is simply a reflection of her choice. Allow women who do not want to make that same choice the option of doing so. In addition, all of the training and experience she had means that a company loses all of that, after their investment in her. A better system would be to allow flex time for new parents, so that their skills are continually updated and there is no gap.
What you did by giving the example of your sister is to simply give credence to those self-confirming stereotypes I mentioned earlier. "Positive" discrimination to remedy past "negative" discrimination is not discrimination, but simply that: a remedy. Again, not all women want to make her choice and neither you nor management should assume that they do.