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Good practice Imported

Database of female supervisory board members

Austria · Vienna · National · See the Austria profile · See the Vienna profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 91% 20/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

The publicly accessible female supervisory board database supplements the well-founded training of "Future.Women". More than 830 highly qualified women are already registered in this database, which makes the search for female candidates for supervisory board positions much easie

830+ count
Women registered in database (as of source retrieval, 2026-06-14)

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Federal Ministry of Labor and Economics (BMAW), the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber (WKÖ) and the Federation of Austrian Industry (IV) — website
Power domain
Political Power
Methods / tools
Competence development, Awareness-raising, Networking
Region (NUTS)
AT13
Keywords
mentoring, networking, mentees, alumnae, supervisory boards positions

Context

Austria promotes women on supervisory boards through both a statutory quota (companies with more than 1,000 employees) and a voluntary federal-government commitment for companies with at least 50% federal ownership. The publicly accessible database of female candidates was created as a by-product of the 'Future.Women' training programme.

Objectives

To make it easier for companies, headhunters and the Ministry of Economic Affairs to find qualified women for supervisory board positions.

Activities

A publicly accessible online database in which qualified women register as candidates for supervisory board positions; the database is also used by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and supports networking among trained women.

Results

More than 830 highly qualified women are registered in the database (as reported at the time of source retrieval); it complements the statutory and voluntary quota requirements and has created dedicated networking opportunities for women seeking, or already in, top-management roles.

Conclusions

As a low-cost by-product of an existing training initiative, the database is a practical complement to Austria's quota policy for supervisory boards; the source material does not include an independent evaluation of how many registrants have gone on to be appointed to boards.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — Low-cost by-product of the existing Future.Women training programme; primarily database hosting and registration administration rather than new dedicated programme spend.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — Built on an existing training pipeline; the timeframe over which the database reached 830+ registrants is not stated in the source.
Staffing & skills
Federal Ministry of Labor and Economics (BMAW) staff administering the database, Austrian Federal Economic Chamber (WKÖ) and Federation of Austrian Industry (IV) as partner organisations

Conditions for success

  • An existing training pipeline (Future.Women) to supply qualified candidates
  • A statutory/voluntary quota creating demand for a searchable candidate pool
  • Buy-in from ministries and employer bodies to use and promote the database

Common failure modes

  • The database may remain underused without active promotion to companies making board appointments
  • No public evidence is available on how many registrants have actually been appointed to boards

Where it fits

Governance type
national government-led registry
Scale
national
Income level
high-income

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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