Deutsche Telekom, Europe’s largest telecommunications company, said Monday that it would more than double the number of women who are managers within five years, becoming the first member of the DAX 30 index of blue-chip German companies to introduce gender quotas.

Political pressure has grown on companies across Europe to increase women’s representation among their leadership ranks and to address persistent gender gaps in areas like pay and professional opportunity.

Deutsche Telekom said it planned to raise the number of women in senior and middle management to 30 percent by the end of 2015, from 12 percent today. The company said it had roughly 15,000 management positions worldwide.

“Taking on more women in management positions is not about the enforcement of misconstrued egalitarianism,” the company’s chief executive, René Obermann, said in a statement. “Having a greater number of women at the top will quite simply enable us to operate better.”