CRITICS say it lacks both ambition and teeth.

Germany’s proposed bill to set quotas for women on executive boards is touted by its backers as a breakthrough for the country’s gender-equality push. Its detractors, however, point out that it will still leave Europe’s biggest economy with among the most male-dominated corporate suites in the developed world.

Germany, whose Chancellor Angela Merkel is the longest-serving female head of state in the world, has one of the poorest records for promoting women in business in Europe. The quota bill, asking companies to have at least one woman on their management boards, will bump up the share of female executives to about 15 percent, taking Germany’s ranking to about 17 from 24 in the 27-member European Union, according to Boston Consulting Group.

“I don’t believe it’s going to create the impact you’re wanting,” said Maria Ferraro, chief financial officer of Siemens Energy and among the few high-profile women in corporate Germany. “One individual who is different doesn’t do the trick, though it is progress.”

The bill requires boards with four or more members to have at least one woman. But since it demands nothing from boards with fewer than four members or those that already have a female executive, it would only affect about 30 of the country’s top 107 companies.

The proportion of women on executive boards at Germany’s 30 biggest listed companies fell 1.9 percentage points this year to 12.8 percent, compared with 28.6 percent in the United States, according to the Allbright Foundation, which promotes diversity in management. About a third of Germany’s top 100 companies have no women on their management boards.

The failure to add women comes in the face of evidence that of the 100 largest listed companies, the 30 with the most gender diversity outperformed the benchmark DAX index by more than two percentage points. Also, if corporate Germany doesn’t buy into management diversity more fully, it risks blunting its competitive edge, cautioned Ferraro.

This isn’t the first time Germany has pushed for greater gender equality at companies. In 2001, under then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, business leaders pledged to do more, but did little. A 2015 law asked the country’s largest listed companies to appoint 30 percent women to their supervisory boards, leaving the powerful, decision-making executive boards untouched.

In May last year, addressing a roomful of women entrepreneurs in Berlin, Merkel could barely conceal her frustration at the number of German companies with no female executive board members. She characterized it as “an attitude of refusal.”

It’s not clear yet what penalties companies will face for failing to meet the quota. The bill also leaves other gender-equality metrics untouched.

At about 20 percent, Germany has the second-worst gender pay gap in the EU, behind Estonia. Also, none of the country’s 30 largest companies has a woman chief executive officer.

A woman “can become chancellor in Germany but not a CEO,” said Wiebke Ankersen, managing director at Allbright. (SD-Agencies)