--- title: New German Law Requires Companies to Put More Women on Their Boards description: Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing for more women in management positions canonical: https://time.com/3630800/germany-women-board-executives/ author: Eliana Dockterman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-12-11T22:21:13.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:56:27.422Z og:title: New German Law Requires Companies to Put More Women on Their Boards og:description: Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing for more women in management positions og:url: https://time.com/3630800/germany-women-board-executives/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf46807eaaf0d5efd/69876b32524fc014eddeaffc/angela-merkel.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: Angela Merkel og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: New German Law Requires Companies to Put More Women on Their Boards twitter:description: Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing for more women in management positions twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf46807eaaf0d5efd/69876b32524fc014eddeaffc/angela-merkel.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Germany Requires Large Companies to Put More Women in the Boardroom > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters.  by [Eliana Dockterman](https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Correspondent Dec 11, 2014 10:21 PM UTC  Chancellor Angela Merkel in the lower house of parliament Bundestag in Berlin, Nov. 26, 2014. Chancellor Angela Merkel in the lower house of parliament Bundestag in Berlin, Nov. 26, 2014. Stefanie Loos—Reuters  by [Eliana Dockterman](https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Correspondent Dec 11, 2014 10:21 PM UTC Women are about to flood the corporate world in Germany. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government adopted a bill on Thursday that will require large listed companies to fill at least 30% of the supervisory board seats with female non-executive directors. The bill will also force thousands of large and mid-size companies to employ more women as managers. Despite being arguably the most powerful woman in the world, Merkel has so far been unable to convince Germany’s male-dominated business world to voluntarily diversify. Only one-third of the 30 companies in Germany’s DAX stock index would currently meet the 30% quota suggested in the bill. Women’s representation on executive boards is low compared to other European countries like Norway, France and Sweden, according to the Wall Street _Journal._ “I am convinced that we will set in motion a cultural change and that this law is a historic milestone for more equality between women and men in this country,” Manuela Schwesig, family minister and main sponsor of the bill, said at a news conference. The new law will require 108 publicly-traded companies to place women in over 170 supervisory board seats. And an additional 3,500 companies with over 500 employees each will have to boost the number of women in management positions within the next two years. But businesses are unenthused to meet these targets. A quota “ignores that professional qualification must be the decisive criterion for filling a supervisory board position,” Germany’s employer and industry federations said in a joint statement. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3630800/germany-women-board-executives/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3630800/germany-women-board-executives/"},"headline":"Germany Requires Large Companies to Put More Women in the Boardroom","datePublished":"2014-12-11T22:21:13.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:56:27.422Z","description":"Large listed companies must fill at least 30% of the supervisory board seats with female non-executive directors, under new law","url":"https://time.com/3630800/germany-women-board-executives/","keywords":["Living","Germany","Business topic","gender equality","International"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf46807eaaf0d5efd/69876b32524fc014eddeaffc/angela-merkel.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliana Dockterman","jobTitle":"Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf46807eaaf0d5efd/69876b32524fc014eddeaffc/angela-merkel.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Angela Merkel","caption":"Chancellor Angela Merkel in the lower house of parliament Bundestag in Berlin, Nov. 26, 2014.","creditText":"Stefanie Loos—Reuters","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3630800/germany-women-board-executives/","name":"Germany Requires Large Companies to Put More Women in the Boardroom"}}]}] ```