When leadership positions in business, politics, culture, and academia are occupied by a more diverse range of people representing different societal groups, this can pave the way for greater social justice overall. The introduction of quotas in recruitment practices – especially for women – has repeatedly been a subject of controversial debates. But women are not the only demographic underrepresented in leadership positions and public offices. The public debate on affirmative action in Germany has also centered on better representation of people with an immigrant background, people from the LGTBIQ+ community, people from a non-academic background, and people originally from East German states. Céline Teney, a sociologist at Freie Universität Berlin, has been investigating which societal groups the German population believes should be better represented in leadership positions and recently published a study on the subject.

Support for Affirmative Action Policies

Mandatory quotas in recruitment processes generally fall into the category of “affirmative action policies,” which means that members of underrepresented groups who are equally qualified are given preference in the selection process. Professor Teney and her team worked together with Katja Möhring, professor of sociology at the University of Mannheim, and the market research firm YouGov to investigate levels of public support for affirmative action policies within the context of hiring underrepresented groups to leadership positions. The survey was conducted online in July 2021 with about 2676 participants from the German working population.

Participants were asked to what extent they supported the introduction of quotas for women and people from an immigrant background, as well as for East Germans, who are still largely underrepresented in key positions in various societal areas more than thirty years after reunification. Social background is also a particularly important factor in educational and professional achievement in Germany, which is why affirmative action measures for persons from non-academic households (i.e., with parents without tertiary education degrees) were also included in the questionnaire.

The survey showed that there was significantly more support among respondents for affirmative action policies directed at women and persons from non-academic households when these groups were equally qualified, with an average approval rating of 5.5 on a scale of 0 to 10. Participants also expressed that they were in favor of policies directed at persons with an immigrant background or native East Germans, but the approval rating was much lower, with an average of about 4.3 on a scale of 0 to 10.

Non-Academic Households Are Perceived as Disadvantaged

According to Teney, the findings indicate that individuals from non-academic households constitute an important social category that the German population considers disadvantaged. Lower levels of support for affirmative action policies for native East Germans and persons with an immigrant background can be traced back to the fact that these identity categories rely on regional membership, whereas being a woman or coming from a non-academic household are ascriptions that are more broadly distributed in the general population, Teney explains. Another explanation for the results has to do with an issue related to identity politics in general, namely the difficulty of establishing clear criteria to define categories of belonging. In the case of East Germans – and to a lesser degree for persons with a migration background – the definition of who should belong to the target group is contested and not clear-cut, as boundaries between some categories of distinctions tend to blur.

In general, how leadership positions are filled should reflect the diversity of the wider population so that the representation of these groups is legitimized and their diverse expertise and viewpoints are given greater consideration. Teney says that the new study shows that the German population is very much aware of inequality in hiring practices for key positions in society. She adds that if decision-makers in business and politics wish to increase public support for measures such as quotas, they should focus on raising public awareness of how discrimination affects members of underrepresented groups in the context of hiring practices for leadership positions.

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This article originally appeared in German on November 25, 2022, in the Tagesspiegel newspaper supplement published by Freie Universität Berlin.