Women hold more than two in five leadership positions at the country’s largest publicly traded companies, but a “sea change” is still needed to gain more positions in the most powerful positions.
The proportion of leadership roles held by women in the FTSE 350 rose by two percentage points last year to 42.1 per cent, according to the government-backed FTSE Women Leaders Review.
This is up from 24.5 percent recorded when the report was launched in 2017.
Campaigners hailed this progress as a “revolutionary change” for UK plc, but said even more needs to be done to get women into senior roles.
There are only ten female chief executives in the FTSE 100 and two women chairing a top board.
Utility giant: The longest-serving chief executive is Liv Garfield (pictured), who has been boss of water company Severn Trent for almost a decade.
The longest-serving chief executive is Liv Garfield, who has been boss of water company Severn Trent for almost a decade.
The latest addition to the list is BT chief executive Allison Kirkby, who took over at the telecoms giant last month.
But Gwen Rhys, founder of Women in the City, said the current lack of female chief executives remains “disappointing” for Britain.
“We are making progress, but it has taken us more than ten years to get to where we are,” he said.
Women make up just 35 per cent of all leadership roles at FTSE 350 companies, a figure that has remained stubbornly stable in recent years and remains short of the 40 per cent target, the report said.
This includes positions such as CEO, CFO, and other executive committee members involved in the day-to-day running of the business.
And despite significant improvements in recent years, nine FTSE 350 companies still have all-male executive committees.
The nine listed companies without women on their committee include Aston Martin Lagonda, Savills, Hochschild Mining, Foresight Group, Primary Health Properties, BBGI Global Infrastructure, Bellway, International Distributions Services and Fresnillo.
At the other end of the spectrum, companies such as Severn Trent and Diageo have led the way on diversity, with more women than men on boards – a respective female representation of 75 per cent and 70 per cent.
Denise Wilson, chief executive of FTSE Women Leaders Review, said this was due to the “revolutionary change in culture and dialogue” around business leadership.
Just over a decade ago, 152 of the 350 FTSE companies had no women on their boards.
Overall, Burberry was the best performer in the FTSE 100 for female representation on boards and leadership teams, while Frasers Group, the retail empire led by Mike Ashley, was the worst.
But Penny James, co-chair of the FTSE Women Leaders Review, said: “We need a step change in the pace of improvement to reach our target of 40 per cent representation of women at the top of the industry within two years.”
The UK is second only to quota-led France, which has 44.7 per cent representation of women on boards.
