(FT) -- German managers are hitting back after the government threatened to impose quotas for female representation on companies' boards, fuelling a debate on the shortage of women in top management.
Executives at several listed groups said they were stepping up efforts to foster diversity, but rejected a state-imposed female quota.
"At the executive level I do not approve of a quota at all," Ines Kolmsee, chief executive of SKW Metallurgie, a German specialty chemicals maker, told the Financial Times.
"For many positions we would simply not be able to find women because there are hardly any female engineers in the metallurgy sector."
Ms Kolmsee is the only female chief executive among Germany's 130 largest listed companies.
Angelika Dammann, executive board member at SAP, the world's largest business software maker, told the FT: "We are in favour of actively promoting women instead of a strict quota."
Karl-Ludwig Kley, chief executive at Merck, said: "It goes against any economic sense to put women into management positions just to meet a quota."
The pharmaceuticals company last week announced a target to lift the proportion of female managers to between 25 and 30 per cent within the next five years.
The debate gained heat last week after Josef Ackermann, Deutsche Bank chief executive, said that the appointment of women would make the bank's management board "more colourful" and "more beautiful".
The remarks were attacked as patronising by several women in business and politics.
Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, last week called the lack of women in top management a "true scandal".
She said companies were being given a "last chance" to make progress on the issue.
Companies face pressure from Viviane Reding, European Commissioner, who has threatened to impose quotas on the biggest 500 listed groups in Europe.
Christine Lagarde, French finance minister, told the FT last week that Europe could improve its competitiveness by adding women to corporate boards.
She pointed out that France had passed a law imposing a quota of 40 per cent female representation on the boards of the biggest companies by 2017.
The debate has put a spotlight on the lack of diversity in Europe, and in Germany in particular.
Last year, only 2.2 per cent of executive board members at Germany's 30 blue-chip Dax companies were women.
Germany, where until 1977 a husband was legally allowed to terminate his wife's labour contract, is said to be lagging behind because of a lack of childcare facilities and stereotypes about women's suitability for top positions.
© The Financial Times Limited 2011
