Overview
- Fidar’s May 2026 analysis of 183 listed and co‑determined companies finds the share of women on supervisory boards has stalled at 37 percent.
- The study reports that women’s representation on executive boards slipped from 19.9 percent to 19.1 percent year‑on‑year, which Fidar calls an alarm signal.
- The dataset covers 160 firms listed in the DAX, MDAX and SDAX plus 23 other publicly listed or co‑determined companies, giving a broad view of large German corporations.
- Fidar and its leaders propose raising the supervisory‑board quota to 40 percent, extending quotas to all listed or co‑determined firms, and introducing fixed quotas for executive boards, and Federal Women’s Minister Karin Prien has publicly backed boosting female leadership.
- The findings follow Germany’s existing rules—a 30 percent supervisory‑board quota from 2016 and a 2022 minimum‑participation rule for large listed firms—and highlight that firms under binding rules show better female representation than those outside them.