DAX board members: Female managers are increasingly closing the salary gap with men

Women are in the minority on the boards of stock exchange companies, but are no longer the exception. And there are more of them. The development of pay is also developing positively.

Dusseldorf. The top female managers of the most important German stock exchange groups earned more in 2025 and have almost caught up with their male colleagues. Female board members - excluding CEOs - in the DAX, MDax and SDax received an average of 2.2 million euros last year.

“That is 2.4 percent more than the year before,” reports the consulting firm EY in a study available to the German Press Agency. The male colleagues received 2.23 million euros, almost two percent less than in the previous year. “The gap has therefore shrunk from 121,000 euros to 26,000 euros.”

At the same time, EY has “never counted as many women on the board of directors” as in 2025. According to this, last year 101 female board members were in office for the entire financial year: 50 in the DAX, 30 in the MDax and 21 in the SDax. A year earlier there were 88, in 2013 there were only 33. This means that every fourth board member examined is now a woman.

Compensation depends less on gender

"Women on the board of directors are no longer an exception. This also has an impact on salaries," sums up EY partner Jens Massmann. “A few years ago there were only a few female board members, and individual high salaries had a strong influence on the average,” said the compensation expert. "Today the group is significantly larger. Remuneration therefore depends more on department, experience and company size and less on gender."

However, the EY experts noticed clear differences between the individual stock market segments. Among the regular DAX board members, women have clearly caught up. Their remuneration rose by a good four percent to 3.04 million euros. For men it fell slightly to 3.33 million euros (minus 1.4 percent), so that the gap narrowed from 455,000 euros to 284,000 euros.

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"At around 30 percent, the proportion of women on the DAX boards is still clearly higher than on the MDax and SDax. In 2013, there were just 13 women on the DAX boards who were in office for the entire year; in 2025 there were 50."

In the two smaller indices the development is going in the other direction. According to EY, the remuneration of male board members in the MDax rose by eight percent to 1.89 million euros. For women, the increase was four percent to 1.59 million euros. "The gap grew from 211,000 to 295,000 euros. At the same time, the proportion of women on the MDax boards rose noticeably, from 23 to 28 percent."

In the SDax, the salaries of both groups increased significantly: for men by twelve percent to 1.22 million euros, for women by eleven percent to 1.07 million euros. "The gap increased slightly from 134,000 to 155,000 euros. At around 18 percent, the proportion of women in the SDax is the lowest."

According to Massmann, many women are just now joining the board of directors in the MDax and SDax. "Anyone who is newly appointed usually starts with a lower salary than colleagues who have been in office for a long time. Because the groups there are still relatively small, individual new appointments have a strong influence on the average. In the long term, I also expect a convergence there, as we are already seeing in the DAX."