Quality | 2009.11.18
Number of female executives in Footsie companies still falling
A quarter of all boardrooms are entirely male, report finds
A disheartening picture for women will be revealed in an influential report today which will show that the number of executive directorships in the FTSE 100 index held by women has fallen over the past year.
The 2009 Female FTSE report from Cranfield School of Management shows that corporate Britain is failing women. There were only 15 female executive directors in the top 100 companies this year, down from 16 last year, and the number of boards with more than one female director has dropped from 39 to 37. The overall number of companies with women on the board has fallen, a quarter of boards are exclusively male, and there are just four female chief executives, down from five.
Sarah Williams-Gardener, the director of the lobby group Opportunity Now, said: "The economic crisis and collapse of many institutions should have proved a catalyst for organisations to review who and how they select leaders."
Some 113 women hold 131 executive and non-executive posts in the FTSE, some of them serving on more than one board. That compares with 834 men who occupy holding 947 directorships. Top of the league for diversity this year were the investment company Alliance Trust and the luxury goods group Burberry. Three of Alliance\'s seven board members are women: Katherine Garrett-Cox, Clare Sheikh and Lesley Knox. At Burberry, Angela Ahrendts and Stacey Cartwright are chief executive and chief financial officer, aided by non-executive director Stephanie George. The drinks giant Diageo is the only FTSE company with four female directors, all of them non-executives.
Despite claims that the macho culture at the top of UK companies fuelled the credit crunch, of the 156 appointments to top boardrooms last year only 23, or just 14.7%, were women, and of those, only one was a British national. The report identifies the banks as the "biggest disappointment" after the percentage of female directors in the five listed in the FTSE dropped to 9% from 12%.
"It would appear that instead of becoming a time for change, the economic climate of the last year has left the top companies more male dominated," said the report\'s co-author, Ruth Sealy.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/19/fewer-women-executives
