East Germans in leadership positions: Lack of opportunities and new paths!

East Germans in leadership positions: Lack of opportunities and new paths!

In Germany, there is an impressive imbalance in the management ranks: While East Germans make up 20 percent of the population, they are only represented in top positions by 12.1 percent. These alarming figures come from the current Elite Monitor, a comprehensive study carried out by scientists from the universities of Leipzig, Jena and the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences. The survey evaluated around 3,000 top positions in twelve sectors and reveals a persistent underrepresentation of East Germans in management levels.

Developments varied greatly depending on the sector. In politics, the proportion of East German elites rose from 19.9 percent in 2018 to 21.4 percent in 2024. The increase in administration is also positive: here the proportion reached 12.7 percent, compared to 9.8 percent six years ago. In the economy, however, there was a decline, where the proportion of East German managers fell from 5.1 percent to just 4.0 percent. The cultural sector is particularly affected, falling from 9.3 percent to 6.8 percent. At 0 percent, the military sector remains another dark side of this development, which underlines the urgent need for change, as nordkurier.de reports.

Insufficient access to networks

A key point that explains the underrepresentation is the networks, which are often dominated by West German men. East Germans often not only have worse starting conditions for access to these networks, but also tend to be more reserved when it comes to networking. These obstacles can be understood as part of the challenges that make advancement to upper management levels difficult, as explained on zdf.de. The fact that elite positions are rarely openly advertised also compounds the problem.

Elisabeth Kaiser, the government's Eastern Commissioner, has already spoken out in favor of greater representation of East Germans in leadership positions. Their voices are supported by representative surveys that show that 4,100 managers were surveyed nationwide and reveal a clear discrepancy between East and West. Particular attention is paid to media presence, which increased from 8.4 percent to 10.3 percent, but this represents a comparatively small improvement in the overall picture.

Systematic changes necessary

Despite some positive developments, the road to equal opportunities remains rocky. The Elite Monitor also finds that of the more than half of the top positions filled between 2018 and 2022, only 8 percent were held by East Germans, while 54 percent of the positions were filled by West Germans. Carsten Schneider, the Federal Government's Eastern Commissioner, calls for targeted measures to improve the representation of East Germans and rejects a mandatory Eastern quota because he considers more diverse selection committees at the federal level to be necessary. It is becoming increasingly clear that changes are needed in both the political and social spheres to advance equality in society.

At a time when the discussion about equal opportunities is constantly being renewed, the question remains: What will happen next? There are encouraging approaches aimed at promoting the visibility and representation of East Germans. But until these structural changes take effect in the management ranks, it is important not to let up and to raise our voices for more equality tagesschau.de summarized.