At 6:15 in the morning it’s still quiet in Gillian Tans’ world. She quickly gets herself ready before preparing breakfast and the lunchboxes for her three children, who wake up soon afterward. This is the start of the morning activities. Together they get to school, obviously on a bicycle, since Tans is Dutch and lives in Amsterdam with her family. When the children are at school, Tans moves on to her next baby: Booking.com.
Gillian Tans, who is 46, is the head of the globally leading hotel booking portal that employs over 15,000 people – and she’s pretty alone at the top. Not only because the tech world in particular is still mostly comprised of men. In general, women in leadership positions of such big businesses are still a rarity.
In Germany, women comprise 45 percent of the world force, but only occupy 29 percent of the leadership positions. This means that they’re significantly underrepresented in Germany’s top business roles, which a study from the Institute of German Economics (IW) in April 2018 showed. Although Angela Merkel (CDU) has given Germany a female head of state for such a long time that children have begun asking whether men can be chancellor too, there is no single Dax-30 business that’s being led by a woman.
This is why female leadership is a big topic for the economy. It has to be discussed, even if it’s just out of pure self-interest: “Well-educated women are needed at businesses now more than ever. Whoever isn’t making them competitive and adequate offers will eventually be at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to their staff,” said Ulrike Hasbargen, a partner at the business consulting company EY, which recently published a study about women in leadership positions.
The management of German businesses continues to be the domains of men, even though more and more women are climbing the career ladder. The number of female managers in executive circles of quoted businesses rose to 7.3 percent on the record date of January 1, 2018 (in the previous year, it was 6.5 percent).
On the 160 businesses on the stock market indices Dax, M-Dax, S-Dax, and TecDax, there were for the first time 50 women in leadership positions. Those were seven more than the year before. This is in comparison to the 636 men in these positions. 73 percent of the management boards are still comprised of men, after all. Only 27 percent of businesses have at least one female manager in a leadership position.
“Women’s path to leadership in businesses remains difficult and full of obstacles,” Ulrike Hasbargen, the EY partner, said. That’s why very few things have changed, despite voluntary quotas and public debates. If things continue at the same pace as they were going last year, then it will only be by 2038 that a third of the executive roles will be occupied by women.
And this is despite the fact that women are the better bosses, as a 2017 study from the Norwegian Business School demonstrated. The researchers analysed 2,900 executives, among them 900 women, on five key traits that define a successful manager: managing stress, taking initiative, promoting innovation, supporting others, and effectively achieving goals. The results: female top managers performed significantly better. The women were communicating more clearly, were more open to innovation, more conscientious, and were more effective in supporting employees.
The “Thomas-Cycle”
So why are women not moving up? The non-profit AllBright Foundation points to the so-called “Thomas-cycle.”: Five percent of CEOs in German businesses were named Thomas in March 2017 – so there are more CEOs named Thomas or Michael (49 in total), than there are women (46). This is because a German CEO prefers to surround themselves with mirror images of themselves. According to the report, this means that not only women are missing opportunities: this also affects everyone who was educated in East Germany, for example. They make up less than one percent of CEOs. 93 percent are male, 76 percent are German, and 71 percent are economic scientists or engineers. “This is how the same leadership compositions keep regenerating for decades, and a lot of innovation and self-correcting potential is being missed,” the study said.
A quota could help break through the constant “Thomas-cycle,” at least when it comes to the number of women. The required quota for reappointments in supervisory boards shows that this can work. Since early 2016, 101 quoted, fully co-determined companies are required to ensure that at least 30 percent of the new hires in supervisory boards are women. Thanks to the quota, this has now been achieved: the number of women in supervisory boards has risen from 27.4 percent in 2016 to 30.1 percent in 2017. The positive trend may continue because some companies are going beyond the prescribed quota, while others are still lagging behind.
A look at executive boards shows: if there’s no push, there’s no progress. It’s in a business’ best interest to promote female managers and give them a chance to reach higher managerial positions, Hasbargen said. “Otherwise, it’s just a matter of time until we’ll also have a quota for that.”
Businesses usually don’t want to take responsibility for this. From their point of view, there are simply not enough women who are qualified for higher leadership positions. “The CEOs of big companies must have led 500 or 1,000 employees for years, have international experience, and bring intercultural skills to the table,” Frank Beyer, who is the personnel consultant for LAB & Company and is tasked with finding such candidates, tells the “Süddeutsche Zeitung.” His desired female candidates would turn down jobs more frequently than men and cite moves and commutes as being incompatible with their family life. But from the point of view of the recruiter, a female quota of 15 to 20 percent should still be achievable under the current conditions.
From the point of view of Oliver Stettes, a labour market expert at the Institute of German Economy, the low percentage of female candidates for leadership positions proves that political quotas are missing the point. “We should instead be focused on eliminating barriers that keep women from applying in the first place,” he said. The first thing would be to ensure better and more comprehensive child care, which women would benefit from enormously. More flexible working times would also help combine work and family life. While demands on time increase as responsibilities increase, some companies allow part-time leadership roles. According to the data of the IW-personnel panel, this applies to a fifth of all companies. “In order to fully utilise the potential of possible leadership roles, creative solutions to combining work and family life is an important starting point,” Stettes said.
Career And Kids?
The Booking.com CEO Tans also advocates for more female executives. This is why she gets annoyed when she has to answer the question: “How do you balance a career and kids?” Especially, since men are almost never asked this question.
She knows how important it is to have female role models, and therefore is happy to tell of her own career path: “At the beginning of my career, I was like many other women: I was shy when I was the only women among men at a meeting. It took some time for me to be able to speak my mind,” she recalls in an interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung.” Women might need a bit more time before they develop the necessary self-confidence in such conditions. “I was given that time. It was also important for me that our business culture allowed us to make mistakes. In this way, I was able to experiment and move out of my comfort zone more easily.
Businesses would automatically benefit from a higher number of women since “mixed teams are always more successful.” But it is difficult to keep these women – for various reasons. “That’s why there has to be a constant effort. For example, we organised a “Hackathon” for women so that they can demonstrate their programming abilities. I believe that it’s very important to have female role models in the tech scene,” Tans said.
10 TIPS ON HOW TO BRING WOMEN INTO LEADERSHIP POSITIONS
- More women in management Wer in der ersten Liga mitspielen will, muss auch bei der Frauenquote vorangehen – deshalb sollte in den Unternehmen eine Quote für Frauen auf Ebene der Geschäftsführung eingeführt werden.
- There should be at least three women on the level directly below management Women at the top should be visible. A woman by herself will often be thought of as a quota, and not an expert.
- At least two thirds of women at top leadership positions should be recruited internally: That signals that the company promotes its women. It also ensures that they’re supported by mentors.
- Conscious commitment and visible recognition: A clear, ambitious position when it comes to promoting women will set the tone internally and externally and will attract potential applicants.
- Every manager should have at least one specification to promoting women: The subject will only be taken seriously when it directly affects evaluations and compensation. Only then will men open their networks.
- At least four of the ten most important projects should be led or co-led by women: This makes women visible as experts and opens up networks for them.
- Every conference should have female experts on panels: As experts, women receive attention and respect.
- Meetings should be organised in a way that takes families into account: Otherwise, family obligations sideline women from information and decisions.
- Every job posting should be formulated in a gender-neutral way: Male-associated terms such as “assertive” may discourage many women from applying.
- The proposal list of headhunters should include at least 30 percent of women: “Those who seek shall find” also applies to HR.
Booking.com has some women in leadership positions, such as the head of HR and the head of the business customer section. Women make up 20 percent of the technical positions. “In the Netherlands, we start ensuring early on that children – including girls – learn to program at a young age. Our school system must adapt to new career landscapes.”
When she was pregnant with her first child, she was worried about telling her boss. But he just saId: “That’s alright, it will make you a better manager.” At the time she didn’t really understand what he meant, but he was right. “Mothers are so well organised because they also want to have time with their families,” Tans said. Moments such as cycling to school with her kids are important too, after all.
About the Author:
Sonja Álvarez writes for the Tagesspiegel in Berlin and the Handelsblatt in Düsseldorf – but thanks to modern communications technology, the editorial location hardly matters anymore.
Note:
This article has already appeared in the summer issue of the “club!” magazine of the Business Club Hamburg, and was given to us to reprint. You can find more information at: magazin.bch.de