One in 10 of Britain's top companies still have no female representation in boardroom -survey
LONDON (TrustLaw) –There are more women on the boards of Britain’s leading companies than ever before but the positive headline figure masks an increasingly wide gap between the number of females holding executive director positions and those in non-executive roles, according to a new study.
The number of women directors in companies in the FTSE 100 index of Britain’s top shares now stands at 163, or 15 percent, a rise of 2.5 percent from last year, according to a report by the Cranfield University School of Management.
Most of the growth has come from appointments to non-executive positions, which now total 143, or 22.4 percent, while the number of female executive directors stands at 6.6 percent.
But one in 10 of Britain’s top companies still have no female representation in the boardroom, the survey showed, despite a high-profile campaign launched a year ago by former banker Lord Davis to end all-male boards. Davis told big companies to double the number of women in boardrooms by 2015 or face government sanctions.
While the Davis campaign has galvanized some companies into taking action on appointing more females to top positions, over the past 13 years the number of women executive directors has risen only risen to 20 this year from 13 in 1999, the authors of the report noted. This compares to 285 male executive directors in FTSE 100 companies.
The report noted that is partly due to recommendations made in 2003 by the Higgs Report, a review commissioned by the UK government and that changed the face of boardrooms by prompting an increase in non-executive directors at the expense of executive directors.
“But this alone does not excuse the lack of progress made by CEOs (chief executive officers) in promoting women to these top positions,” the report, “Female FTSE Board Report 2012 – Milestone or Millstone,” said.
There are now 89 companies in the FTSE 100 with at least one female director, while 50 have multiple women in director positions.
At the top of this year’s ranking came drinks company Diageo, with four women directors, or 44.4 percent of its board, one of them being its chief financial officer. At the bottom was mining company Xstrata with none.
Liz Field, chief executive officer of the Financial Skills Partnership, said it was also important to ensure a “continuous pipeline of female talent”.
A study published by the Institute of Leadership and Management on Monday pointed to a “macho culture” preventing women from reaching the top in banking, while a separate report by recruitment firm Korn/Ferry Whitehead Mann found that female representation on the management board – the stepping stone to a boardroom role – had fallen by 2.2 percent last year.
“Companies would do well to follow in the footsteps of the most progressive amongst them which – besides introducing better diversity monitoring and tailored development and mentoring programmes for women – are also trying to tackle the most deep-seated causes such as unconscious bias,” Field said in a statement.
The European Commission has proposed that there should be mandatory quotas to speed up the recruitment of women to board positions.
Viviane Reading, the European Union justice commissioner, said earlier this month that at current rates it would take 40 years for women to have real representation on boards throughout Europe.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has also been quoted as saying that if progress on female representation did not speed up, “having strong measures will not be taboo any more”.
(Editing by Rebekah Curtis)
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