Unlike in the U.S., German companies have a two-tier board structure, with a management board around the chief executive that runs the day-to-day operations and a supervisory board that is similar to a U.S. board of directors.

Germany first tried to introduce voluntary targets for women in top management positions in 2001, but little changed. Currently, women fill just 17.4 percent of positions on the supervisory boards of the top 160 listed companies and only 6.1 per cent of management board members are female.

Companies unable to appoint women to at least 30 percent of their supervisory board seats by 2016 will be required to leave the seats vacant.

The working group on women and equality also agreed to introduce extra benefits for parents who choose to work part-time after the birth of a child, or to care for relatives.

However the Social Democrats failed to win support for a proposal allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt children, and to divert subsidies for stay-at-home parents to public child care facilities.

Publicly listed German companies will soon have to ensure a 30 percent female presence in their supervisory boards, reported AFP, after the nation's top political parties on Monday agreed on a plan to fix the large gender imbalance in businesses.

In a statement, Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and their likely coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), said that the quota would be imposed by 2016; while companies will also be obliged by 2015 to set and publish individual binding targets to increase female representation in top management.

"We want to improve women's opportunities for advancement in German companies," said Annette Widmann-Mauz, the negotiator for Merkel's CDU, as cited by Bloomberg.

"Women still earn less than men in daily working life and they still find they barely have opportunities to get into leadership positions, even though they're well qualified - that's why we agreed on legally binding rules on equal pay for equal work, and for women in leadership positions," added SDU's main negotiator Manuela Schwesig.

Economy Watch