Work and family life arrangements differed greatly between the east and west before German reunification in 1990. Since reunification, however, the employment rates of mothers with children requiring childcare have converged. This trend is accompanied by a growing approval of maternal...

Women remain significantly underrepresented in the top decision-making bodies in the private sector. Over the past few years, increasingly more European countries have introduced statutory gender quotas to combat this underrepresentation. Other European countries have instead relied on voluntary...

Over the past year, the proportion of women serving on the executive and supervisory boards of the top 100 largest banks in Germany rose slightly to almost nine and 23 percent, respectively. However, growth has come to a halt in the 60 largest insurance companies: on both executive and...

The gender quota for supervisory boards in Germany is effective: by the end of 2017, the proportion of women on the supervisory boards of a good 100 companies that are subject to the quota had risen to 30 percent-three percentage points more than in the previous year. Almost two-thirds of the...

Two traditional options for reforming Ehegattensplitting, the joint taxation of married couples with full income splitting, are de facto income splitting (Realsplitting) or individual taxation with a transferable personal allowance. However, these proposals do not significantly reduce the...

The proportion of women on the boards of large companies in Germany continued to increase during 2020. In the fourth quarter of 2020, there were 101 female executive board members in the 200 largest companies, seven more than in 2019. However, growth was slow, as it was in some of the other...

Over the past years, the proportion of women on the supervisory boards of major companies in Germany has increased. As this second report in the DIW Women Executives Barometer 2021 shows, this has a meaningful, positive impact on the supervisory boards of many companies, and affects interactions...

Public interest in the gender pay gap has risen significantly over the past years in Germany, but the size of the gender pay gap has barely changed. A comparison across European countries shows that a lower female labor force participation rate is associated with a smaller gender pay gap. The...