Equal Participation or Permanent Disadvantages? The Chances of East Germans in Management Positions

Abstract

Numerous studies point to the underrepresentationofEastGermansinleadershippositions.Sofar,however, there have been hardly any studies on the development over time and no studies on the causes of this underrepresentation. This article therefore examines the questions of whether the chances of East Germans in leadership positions are converging with those of West Germans over time or across birth cohorts and to what causes the inequalities can be attributed. The results based on the Socio-Economic Panel with data from 1990 to 2020 show an overrepresentation of East German women, which decreases over time and across cohorts, while the disadvantages of East German men do not change over time, but decrease across cohorts. Compositional differences in human capital, economic structure or social origin play no role in the disadvantages of East German men. In contrast, analyses for higher leadership positions show that there are disadvantages for East German women and men in all cohorts, especially in East Germany. Overall, the results point to the transfer of elites at the beginning of the 1990s as the cause of the disadvantages faced by East German men in gaining access to leadership positions.