Women hold just one in five commercial roles on the boards of Britain’s 350 largest listed companies, according to research that suggests firms have blind spots and operate at “various levels of consciousness” when it comes to senior female staff.
Many are failing to address important barriers that women face in the workplace, the report found, including operating a “woman tax”, whereby women are given additional tasks alongside their day jobs without placing the same expectation on their male peers.
“One of the conclusions that is inescapable from the data is that women count, but men count more,” said Prof Geeta Nargund, the founder and chief executive of Create Fertility, who wrote the foreword to the Women Count report.
Produced by The Pipeline, a business championing executive women, the report analysed gender parity at executive committee level in the UK’s largest businesses.
The study found some progress was being made, with a rise in the average percentage of women in executive committee roles in the FTSE 350 breaking through 30% for the first time.
Among them are Louise Beardmore, the CEO of United Utilities, and Debra Crew, the CEO of Diageo.
However, it found that rather than securing commercial roles – defined as being in charge of profit and loss-making functions – women at board level were more likely to hold “functional” positions, such as HR or marketing.
Finding that for every woman in a senior commercial role in the FTSE 100 there were three men, with a ratio of one in five in the wider FTSE 350, it warned progress to promote women to top boardroom jobs was being made at a “glacial” pace.
“Those women are not on track to get a CEO appointment,” said Nargund. “Companies need to have a quality pipeline of female talent at every level of the organisation.”
Highlighting the lack of progress in the most senior City roles in Britain, the report said that only 13% of FTSE 100 companies had a female CEO. Across the wider FTSE 350, the number has improved from 4% in 2019, but remains low at just 9%.
The report found sharp differences in major industries: sectors including transport, health, electricity, utilities and insurance are moving towards gender parity, with women in more than 40% of executive leadership roles.
Other areas, however – including automobiles and mining – are below 10%. One sector, private equity, has no representation at all.
This matters, said Nargund, because “any business that doesn’t have a broad gender balance in their leadership cadres is one that won’t focus enough on the very specific issues faced by women at work.”
Sue O’Brien, the chair of The Pipeline, said: “The glacial rate of progress towards gender parity demonstrated in our report is a serious cause for concern.
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“Businesses must not shy away from some of these uncomfortable truths: leaders need to examine their workplace culture and ensure that their promotion procedures are truly equitable as well as being merit-based. Taking care of, developing and investing in the workforce you already have is a priority,” she added.
Alexandra Hall-Chen, the principal policy adviser for sustainability, skills and employment at the Institute of Directors, said UK businesses had made progress in tackling gender discrimination and increasing female representation in senior positions in recent years.
“However, clearly the job is not done,” she added. “There is more that business can do to stamp out gender discrimination at all levels and strive for greater representation by women.
“We know that an inclusive approach makes good business sense, both in terms of how the company is viewed by society and through its positive impact on decision-making,” she said.
Pavita Cooper, the chair of the 30% Club UK, called for a “fundamental change” in workplace cultures.
“We need the men at the top of these organisations to challenge the complacency and drive a sense of urgency levelling the playing field for women,” she said. “That should start with addressing the imbalance around gender stereotypes and caring responsibilities.”
