Three cheers, a new report has found 25% of the super successful humans allowed to have their say in the boardrooms of UK FTSE 100 companies are women.
Technically, it should be more like 50% - because that’s what equality would look like – but we’re choosing to focus on the very positive fact the boardroom gender gap is steadily closing (this percentage has doubled since 2011 - back then only 12.5% of board members were women).
This upwards trajectory has been achieved voluntarily; there are currently no legally enforced quotas that demand a certain number of women on boards. However, the former trade minister, Lord Davies (who wrote the report) has already suggested a new target: 33% of women board members at FTSE 350 firms by 2020.
Now for the dispiriting news: 260 of the 286 women on boards of FTSE 100 companies are non-executives. This indicates that structurally companies still need to address how executive committees are formed and examine why enough women still aren’t in the top positions.
Shainaz Firfirayat, an assistant professor at Warwick Business School told the BBC that these quota-smashing stats do not indicate a clear-cut win for women in the workplace: ‘Prior research has shown that women who succeed in typically male tasks such as leadership positions are more disliked and derogated, implying that women confront obstacles in work settings that are not encountered by men to the same degree.’
Much still needs to be done to ensure a workplace climate is fostered that’s mindful of the particular challenges women face in leadership roles. The existing culture means the hurdles women face in top positions are unique and support should be offered to ensure women continue to thrive.
It’s on the government’s agenda: women and equalities minister Nicky Morgan recently announced a series of ‘equality boosting measures’ that will be introduced during the first half of 2016. These include pay transparency at every company with more than 250 employees, plus a legislation requiring large companies to publish the amount awarded to men and women as bonuses. The target Lord Davies is pushing of getting 33% of women on the boards of the UK’s top 350 companies is also folded in to this government backed initiative.