Study: Other countries have more women at the top than Germany

In the top management of the 40 major companies listed in the German DAX stock index, every fourth board member is now a woman - but that pales when compared to many of Germany's competitors.

As of September 1, women made up 24.7% of DAX companies' board members - significantly below the 32.1% seen in the United Kingdom, according to a report from the AllBright Foundation released on Tuesday.

The United States ranked second with 30.1%, followed by France in third at 28.8% and Sweden in fourth with 28.2%.

Only Poland performed worse than Germany, with a percentage of women board members at 18.2%, the study showed. The situation was slightly better among the supervisory boards of DAX companies, where four out of 10 members were female.

Considering all 160 companies together that are listed in the DAX, MDAX, and SDAX stock indices, the proportion of women in board positions increased by 2.3 percentage points to 19.7% within a year. This was a weaker increase than in the previous study, which had seen a 3.2 percentage point rise.

In the control committees of all DAX family companies, as of September 1, 37% of all members were female. The situation in top positions changed little. The study showed no change over last year. There were still 10 female chairwomen of supervisory boards and seven women chief executive officers.