MUNICH — In a country where women find it particularly challenging to combine career and family life, Veronika Bethke enjoys something of a nirvana.

Ms. Bethke, 36, the mother of 3-year-old twin boys, conducts management training at Siemens, the German engineering giant. Since returning from an 11-month parental leave in 2008, she has worked largely part time and, when needed, from home. Her children are at a child-care center sponsored by Siemens just steps from her door.

Compared with the United States, Germany, and much of Europe, are late to the party of corporate gender diversity. But Ms. Bethke’s employer — a multinational company employing 405,000 people in 190 countries to make everything from high-speed trains to medical equipment — is one of the big European corporations that made waves in just the past two or three years trying to attract, retain and promote talented women.

In 2008, Siemens was the first company on the DAX 30 index of blue-chip German companies to appoint a woman — Barbara Kux — to its executive board. A second woman, Brigitte Ederer, was named to the board last summer, as head of corporate human resources, raising the share of women in the Siemens executive suite to 25 percent. That is nearly triple the average of 8.5 percent across German companies and double the European Union average of around 12 percent. (In the United States, roughly 40 percent of all private-sector managers are women, according to the Government Accounting Office.)