Germany’s Woman Workers Lag Behind

Germany’s most powerful person, Angela Merkel, may be female, but the average German woman trails far behind her male counterparts in the workplace. Just 2 percent of German business executives are women, far fewer than the 17 percent in Sweden or 14 percent in the United States. The country is now debating affirmative-action measures: The Dax 30 index, for example, recently announced a voluntary goal for all its companies to have 30 percent female managers by 2015. Merkel, despite her own profile, has never championed gender equality as an issue.