THE GLASS ceiling for business women in Germany is still impenetrable.
Or at least it was until the arrival of Simone Bagel-Trah as the first woman to head one of Germany’s blue-chip companies on the Frankfurt stock exchange.
The 40-year-old trained microbiologist has been appointed supervisory board chairman of German consumer goods company Henkel, best known for its Persil washing powder.
Married with two children, Dr Bagel-Trah owns her own microbiology research company and is the great-great-granddaughter of company founder Fritz Henkel.
Dr Bagel-Trah’s appointment is a radical change in the old boys’ network of German business, where boardrooms, press conferences and morning flights to Frankfurt are dominated by men in suits.
German family and women’s affairs minister Ursula von der Leyen called the news “just as important a signal for the business world as the chancellorship of Angela Merkel was for politics”.
Women’s groups welcomed the appointment but pointed out that working women in Germany are still far behind their European sisters.
“Until 15 years ago Germany stuck to the traditional role of the working man and stay-at-home wife but, happily, that is slowly starting to change,” said Carlotta Köster-Brons, head of the Association of German Businesswomen (VDU), with 1,500 members across all industry sectors.
VDU statistics show that the larger a company in Germany, the less likely it is to be headed by a woman.
Women managers are represented in a quarter of small companies, a fifth of medium-sized business and just 5 per cent of companies with 500 employees or more. In the Bundestag in Berlin, just a third of MPs are women.
Women working in Germany earn nearly a quarter less pay per hour than male colleagues performing the same tasks.
The pay gap varies by sector, from 13 per cent in gastronomy to 29 per cent in the financial sector.
Just 28 per cent of women who work outside the home in Germany are self-employed.
The percentage of women in the workforce varies drastically by region.
In conservative states like Bavaria, women are more likely to stay at home while working outside the home is a near given in the former East German states.