A Slow (but Real) Gain for Women at UK Firms - Building Gender Balanced Business

The 10th-year Cranfield Female FTSE Report shows a small (if real) increase in the number of women on FTSE 100 corporate boards, but with some interesting twists:

• The share of women on corporate boards rose by only five percentage points in the 10 years since the first report, back in 1998.

• The total number of women on FTSE 100 corporate boards is 131, or 12% of the total, up from 79, or 7%.

• Only 16 of the 149 new appointees to the FTSE 100 boards in the last 12 months were women.

• 22 FTSE 100 companies still do not have a single woman on their boards.

• 5 women hold CEO spots on the FTSE 100 in the past year, in no small part because of changes in the makeup of the benchmark index, and 3 more as CEOs of divisional or regional units, bringing the latter total to a record high.

• 2 of the 100 companies have a chairwoman, and women hold 113 directorships, against 66 a decade ago.

• 39 companies have two or more women on their boards, triple the number 10 years ago, with oil, gas, mining and electricity industries leading the gains. Oddly, these are companies with a relatively smaller number of female employees overall when compared with retailing, where women do not predominate in the C-suite.

• Besides the 12% female-held directorships at FTSE 100 firms, and almost 7.2% among the FTSE 250 companies, indexes for smaller listings did even worse, in a 5%-6% range.

• Female directors expect that women will hold only 14% of FTSE 100 directorships after the next 5 years.

The Cranfield authors outlined five steps to remedy this grim scenario:

1. All directorships in the private sector must be advertised (which is already the case in the UK public sector).

1. Long lists for director appointments should reflect an aspirational target of 30% female candidates.

1. Search consultants must be more pro-active in building relationships with potential female non-executive directors.

1. Companies should set gender targets and report on progress in annual reports, including setting and monitoring of key performance indicators at each level of the pipeline.

1. Consideration should be given to female candidates for new board positions in recapitalised banks.

Download the full 66-page Cranfield Female FTSE Report report