[ 2021-02-24 ]

UK companies pressed to appoint more women executives
London (UK) – 24 February 2021 – FT - UK
ministers have urged companies to appoint more
women to senior executive positions following the
end of the Hampton-Alexander review into boardroom
gender diversity.

The government-backed review completes a five-year
programme that has helped women to take more than
a third of positions on FTSE 100, 250 and 350
boards.

The number of women on FTSE boards has risen by 50
per cent since 2015, to 1026. As of last month,
there were no longer any all-male boards in the
FTSE 350.

The Hampton-Alexander review was launched in 2016
to encourage UK-listed companies to appoint more
women into senior leadership positions.

However, more than a hundred FTSE 350 companies
are still not meeting the target of having at
least a third of board positions held by women.

There are also 16 companies that still only have a
single woman on their board — which the review
describes as a ‘one and done’ problem —
albeit down from 116 when the review started.

The government said that all businesses should be
pushing to move beyond such tokenism to ensure
that more women were reaching the highest ranks of
management.

Kwasi Kwarteng, business secretary, said it was
important that businesses kept challenging
themselves “to use all the talents of our
workforce and open up the top ranks for more,
highly-accomplished women”.

Only about 13 per cent of executives on boards are
women in the FTSE 100 — and there are 28
all-male executive committees across the FTSE 350.
The government said that the review “will
reflect on these findings in order to chart a way
forward”.

Sir Philip Hampton, review chair, said that
progress had been strongest with non-executive
board positions, “but the coming years should
see many more women taking top executive roles.
That’s what is needed to sustain the changes
made.”

The focus now needed to shift to ensuring that
women had successful executive careers before
getting to the point of non-executive roles,
Hampton added. “There has been slow progress in
the jobs that matter the most. I refuse to believe
that the best executives are 85 per cent male.”

Denise Wilson, Hampton-Alexander chief executive,
said: “The supply of capable, experienced women
is full to overflowing. It is now for business to
fully utilise a talent pool of educated,
experienced women, to their own benefit and that
of the UK economy.”

For the first time, the FTSE 100 has two companies
with more women on their board than men, Diageo
and Severn Trent. There are four companies in the
FTSE 350 with a female chief executive and chair:
Admiral Group, Pennon Group, Severn Trent and
Direct Line Insurance.

Source - FT, UK

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