Why aren't women howling for change? - Building Gender Balanced Business

The gauntlet has been thrown. Some of you may have missed Peter Day’s In Business programme, Forty percent women, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 2nd October. (We have reported on the programme in a separate article.)

It is well worth listening to the podcast at your leisure, if you are at all interested in the debate about getting more women onto the board of UK companies. All of the people interviewed on the programme agreed that the pace of change in the UK is utterly glacial. Day, himself an enthusiast for a Norway-style quota in the UK, has been reporting on the issue for 20 years and has seen very little progress. The conclusion can only be that we need legislation to make it happen faster, rather than wait another twenty years or even more.

Only Peninah Thomson, a partner of Praesta Partners LLP and co-author of A Woman’s Place is in the Boardroom was in favour of waiting a bit longer to see if companies in the UK could move things along a bit faster, on the basis that legislation of this nature was not likely to work in the UK. But even she made a deal with Peter Day that if there was no marked improvement in two years, she would join the pro-quota lobby.

There is bound to be resistance to change of this kind. But the Norway model showed that it can be done and that many of the familiar arguments against it withered away once the legislation had been passed. For example, many business chiefs felt that it would be impossible to find the women they needed to fill the 40% quota, without resorting to less capable talent.

In fact, according to Elin Hurvenes, the founder of the Professional Board Forum in Norway, it was not that hard to find the talent. It was there, it simply needed networking fora like Hurvene’s creation, to link good women to the businesses looking for directors.

Professor Lynda Gratton told Peter Day that young women today should be very angry at the pace of change. She agreed with Day that they should be “howling” for change. Only about 11% of women are on boards in the UK. The waste of talent is shameful and the missed economic opportunity is insane, especially in the light of today’s financial slowdown. Professor Gratton wants to see a quota installed in the UK. Spain has one, but the UK lags behind. Professor Gratton says she wants to push the debate. As director for the centre for women in business at London Business School, we can expect a lively discussion. Whilst Britain’s political leaders try to fix the banking mess, this small but hugely effective measure could transform the British economy. Worth debating, I think.