In the run up to the general election, the government is attempting to speed change in the boardroom by suggesting it may demand that companies report on their progress to appoint more women directors.
While a majority of those voting in our FMWF poll do not agree with the idea of quotas in the boardroom, research carried out for the Government Equalities Office does show there is a more general sense that there should be more women at the top of big business.
And though about half of those surveyed for the GEO believe there will be equal numbers of men and women in the boardroom in 20 years time, the reality is that at the current rate of change it will take 60 years for women to gain equal representation on the boards of the FTSE100 companies.
At present only one in ten FTSE directors are women – and a large proportion are non-executive directors rather than the ones actually running the show.
Forcing companies to report on what they are doing to encourage women to rise to the top of their business is a start. It will not result in overnight change and will undoubtedly result in a raft of cynical excuses from some organisations. But the process of explaining what steps are or are not being taken should, at least, focus the minds of some senior executives on the gender balance at the top of their businesses.
The idea would be that reporting on the gender blend of the boardroom should become part of the UK Corporate Governance Code, the bible for standards in British business life, and be monitored by the Financial Reporting Council.
This, according to the government, would help diversify the talent pool available to business which in turn can drive success and competitiveness, benefiting the wider UK economy as a whole.
Other steps taken by the government to support women in business include:
- The Equality Bill allows employers to use positive action to appoint more women to senior roles provided the candidates are equally suitable.
- The Equality and Human Rights Commission will soon produce recommendations on tackling sex discrimination in the finance sector. Last year an investigation found only 11 per cent of senior managers were women.
- The government’s new Women’s Employment Strategy intends to work towards a fair and family friendly labour market and will encourage business to link in with programmes, networks and services designed to improve senior representation.
- Two years ago the government and Opportunity Now identified 100 exemplar employers who have taken action to increase the numbers of women at senior levels.
- The Civil Service is committed to increasing the representation of women in top jobs from 35 per cent of Senior Civil Servants today to 39 per cent by 2013.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: ‘We all recognise the value of strong role models for women in all walks of life. But there are too few in Britain’s boardrooms. When more than half of graduates are women, it is completely unacceptable that some of our top 100 companies have not a single woman on their boards – and that none at all have a majority of women on their boards.
‘If we do not see a dramatic change in the composition of company boards in the future we will need to consider taking more serious action to ensure companies recruit from the diverse pool of exceptional talent we have in the UK.’
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March 8th, 2010 at 2:59 pmGordon Brown sets out gender equality measures in International Women’s Day podcast « FMWF says:
[...] For more on this topic, read Lisa Buckingham’s column. [...]