Women and Leading Positions in Germany: The Role of Promotion Programs for Women

Although women are as well educated as men, they do not reach a proportion in management that reflects their workforce share. Obviously, different actors' policies are required to help promote women to leading positions. This paper addresses the question of whether the introduction and existence of special promotion programs for women impact the probability of reaching a management position. Social role and expectation state theory argue why it is difficult for women to rise to leadership positions. On the organisational level, the "homophily principle" leads to state dependence which is one explanation for the persistence of male leadership. Hence, it is argued that women need special opportunities to demonstrate their skills. Mentoring programs could be one way to support women in their careers. In multivariate analyses, probit models are estimated to model the influence of promotion programs on the probability of reaching a leading position. The estimations are based on a German linked employer-employee dataset of almost 142,000 women employed in 3,240 establishments. The dataset covers the time from 2008 to 2014 and allows to control for individual and firm-specific variables. The results show that the introduction of women-friendly policies increases the probability of reaching a managerial position, whereas the existence of such programs does not have an impact.