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topicnews · September 21, 2024

Women in German football: deficits in diversity

Women in German football: deficits in diversity

A rare counterexample: Schalke’s CFO Christina Rühl-Hamers with her board colleagues Matthias Tillmann and Marc Wilmots.

Source: Imago

Men still determine what happens in German professional football without exception. Furthermore, the licensed clubs are far from having equal representation or at least a 30 percent female share. This is the disappointing conclusion reached by the “Football Can Do More” (FKM) initiative in its first annual report on diversity in German professional football.

Hardly any women in leadership positions

The study, which was carried out in collaboration with the AllBright Foundation and involved all 36 licensed clubs except Bayer Leverkusen, Holstein Kiel, Darmstadt 98 and SV Wehen Wiesbaden, paints a “sobering picture overall”. The vast majority (28 clubs) have completely dispensed with a woman in a management position. This was the result of a survey of 636 positions in professional football.

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Only four clubs (FC St. Pauli, FC Schalke 04, Werder Bremen and 1. FC Heidenheim) have any women in their management, and a total of just half a dozen work in top management. The proportion of women in the supervisory bodies is barely in the double-digit percentage range (26 out of 220 people on the supervisory boards).

More backward than politics

“There is still no conviction to put women in leadership positions,” says Katja Kraus, who co-founded the FKM initiative two years ago. The former national goalkeeper and chairwoman of the advisory board at Hamburger SV, the first woman to work on the board, is convinced that change will not happen without public pressure.

In the German Football Association (DFB), a third of the more than 600 employees are female, almost 20 percent of the managers are women – the goal is 30 percent women in full-time and voluntary positions by 2027, as set out in the internal FF27 strategy. At least five women have now made it onto the DFB executive committee, where Hannelore Ratzeburg was the only vice president for decades until 2022 – and then only with responsibility for women’s and girls’ football.

Bundestag member Dorothee Bär (CSU) said at the DFB event “Women in Football Summit” that she had not thought “that we would find a field that is even more backward than politics.” From her work on the FC Bayern administrative advisory board, she could report that breaking down the male football structures is “even more strenuous” than everyday politics.

It has long been apparent that different teams adopt different perspectives because they discuss controversies.

Ultimately, the quality of decisions is improved.

Christina Gassner

For football, it is “important not to ignore this development,” emphasises Christina Gassner, director of the DFB’s Institutional and Political Relations & Strategy Directorate, which was only created in 2023.

St. Pauli provides the counterexample

Bundesliga newcomer FC St. Pauli is taking an exemplary approach by consistently committing to having 30 percent women on its boards. There are currently four women on the seven-member supervisory board.

Sandra Schwedler heads this committee and stresses: “People still find it irritating to meet a female president or board member in football. This shows that it takes time to change the images that are firmly anchored in people’s minds.” “The diversity in our Greece sends a different image – both internally and externally.”

Female managers in professional football

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Another notable example is FC Schalke 04 with its chief financial officer Christina Rühl-Hamers, but the royal blue supervisory board consists of just eleven men. Another inglorious example is provided by traditional clubs with large memberships and a large reach, such as FC Bayern, Eintracht Frankfurt or 1. FC Köln, which have no women in top management or on the supervisory board.

Werder Bremen gives itself a quote

The study criticizes that there is currently no overarching strategy to promote gender diversity and equality in the clubs. Positive examples can be found primarily in the second management level, i.e. the so-called direct reports, who report directly to the top management level. Here, FC Bayern has filled six of 18 positions with women.

Often, however, it is not even really clear where the issue of diversity actually lies. Because it is seen as a burden? In other industries or in the public sector, there are therefore quotas or targets that only SV Werder has committed to so far. The Bremen team wants to have one in four management positions filled by a woman by 2026.

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Source: Reuters

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