Friday 14 October 2011

Update for "women in the boardroom"

Politicians love easy wins: they love good news; so UK government ministers are positively ecstatic that their calls for greater representation of women in corporate boardrooms has borne fruit after just a few months. Figures published by Cranfield Business School show that FTSE 100 companies have moved from 12.5% representation to 14.2%. Whoopee!

But look more closely. Out of 21 female appointments to FTSE 100 companies in the past six months, 18 are non-executives. So there is no evidence that promotion of women within companies is improving. Also the number appointed to a wider spread of FTSE 250 companies was only 28 - so just 7 for companies ranked 100 to 250.

Now it is movement and it may be a good thing but it still misses a large part of the point - diversity in the boardroom is good but equality of opportunity is better and demands changes to recruitment, development and promotion practices below board level. How many of those 28 had kids?

See my posts on discrimination in recruitment  and on discrimination against women in particular

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