Professor Jansen, 51% of university graduates in Germany today are women. The top positions in companies however do not reflect this fact. There are several reasons for this, but is there one particular one?
First we had a feminization of intelligence and now we have a feminization of management. The Deutsche Institut für Wirtschaft (German Institute for Economic Research) found out that compared to 812 men, there are only 21 women on the boards of the 200 largest companies. In the Philippines, the percentage of management positions held by women in medium-sized companies is 47%. An anthropological constant would look different. Here are four theses relating to the causes: 1. Wrong choice of subject; 2. Organization of baby breaks; 3. Too much reflexivity; 4. Absence of networks. Sufficient statistical proof and equally plausible refutations exist for all of these: 1. Women’s preference for the social sciences and humanities can be partly explained by the possibilities these offer for part-time work and for returning to work after a baby break. 2. The missing infrastructure for working mothers in Germany, including kindergartens and all-day care, is something that still requires a lot of improvement. 80% of all part-time workers are women, and you seldom see them in the evenings at promotion games. 3. Women are not as over-confident as men and are less likely to simulate competence, with the result that only 1/5 of women compared to 2/5 of men starting out on their career see themselves as boss at the end. 4. Sociologists use the term “homosocial reproduction” for what we call Old Boys Networks. Management positions are found not in newspapers but in networks. Only recently are we seeing women forming “promotion networks” as opposed to “sympathy networks”.
The demographic development could lead to a lack of managers. Is that the best argument for promoting women?
There are several reasons – related to demography, education systems and competition. The argument that “as things are already difficult, we even have to employ women” is a weak one. Thanks to political will and feminist activity in the postwar world, women are simply more inclined towards education than men – which is helpful in a knowledge society. Studies indicate an improvement in competition as a result of mixed-gender management teams. Even men are convinced of this.
Is the crisis male?
The crisis is definitely male. The American formula for “recession” is “he-cession”. In the current crisis, three times more men than women have lost their jobs. In 2010, more women than men are employed in the United States for the first time ever. In Germany too, unemployment has become more male, at a percentage of 55%.
Futurologist Matthias Horx speaks of “Womenomics” and a general feminization of the economy in the future. Is that the way you see it? Would this change the economy?
I am not a futurologist. Of the 3,758 German supervisory board members in the 600 most important public corporations, only 307 are women. Would “Lehman Sisters” have actually avoided insolvency and the financial crisis with women’s quotas like in Norway and the Netherlands? We can only speculate. But a willingness on the part of women would be better than quotas laid down by politicians. And that willingness is still limited. Presumably because women are too intelligent to get themselves involved in the masochistic macho-world orders. But women will become stronger in product design, in organization, in the development of services and also in controlling – no matter who the CEO “among them” is.
The interview was conducted by Janet Schayan.
Prof. Dr. Stephan A. Jansen –
Professor of Strategic Organization & Finance, born 1971
