Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Never mind the numbers – the boardroom gender battle has barely begun

It’s the way the world’s going, but still it looks quite impressive that the number of women directors of FTSE100 companies has risen from 135 in 2011 (when Vince Cable, as Business Secretary, began agitating on the subject) to 349 today — representing a third of all blue-chip boardroom seats. It’s not long since that proportion was below 10 per cent. But is the corporate patriarchy truly in retreat, or is this still a matter of reluctant window-dressing by the old boys’ network who have prime responsibility for populating boards? I’m reminded of a FTSE boss I once lunched with who said: ‘Oh yes, Vince wrote us a pretty stiff letter but luckily we found a splendid girl to put on the board — [she’s] one of the boys really, loves her shootin’ and everything.’

Veteran businesswomen were as one this week in telling me that the real test of this culture change is at executive, rather than non-executive, level. Other than in human resources and in-house legal departments, there are still far too few women being given the chance to run major parts of listed companies. As the TUC’s Frances O’Grady pointed out: ‘Men are still seven times more likely to be finance directors than women.’

‘It’s the chairman’s job, not the government’s or anyone else’s’ to drive boardroom balance, said one of my sources, and ‘it’s the job of the whole board to hold the chief executive’s feet to the fire’ by demanding to know when the female management talent is going to be allowed to break through — and whether there’s still a high-level gender pay gap. ‘Battle not won!’ emailed another. ‘Much more scrutiny needed of companies that think they’ve ticked the lady box.’ ‘Mind you,’ added a third, ‘it’s my fiftysomething male friends who really find it tough to get jobs these days.

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