Summary
Since
1999 the International Centre for Women Leaders at Cranfield
School of Management has been monitoring the organizational
board demographics and composition of the top FTSE 100 companies.
Through nine successive annual reports, the Female FTSE Report
has benchmarked the FTSE 100 boards and in more recent years
looked at the FTSE 250 (i.e. F101-350) and Executive Committee
demographics for FTSE 100 and 250, tracking the progress of
senior women in these large corporations. The reports have
seen a slow but steady progression on most of the indices
and 2007 saw some high water marks in women’s advancement
onto these boards.
Method
We accessed data on each company from many sources, including
the Boardex database, annual reports and corporate websites.
The FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 listings were taken on 8th September
2007. All data used for the main study were from the public
domain. We contacted company secretaries, media or PR contacts
for information on the composition of the executive committees.
We analysed the data using Excel and Access queries, and using
SPSS, we undertook correlation analyses to examine relationships
between variables, using t-tests where appropriate to see
if means were significantly different.
Results & Conclusions
In 2007, our ninth report, we see a continuing change in the
balance of directorships in the FTSE 100 corporate boards.
Both the number of executive directorships and total number
of directorships are at their lowest levels for nine years.
Meantime, the number of non-executive directorships is at
its highest for nine years. Against this context we have seen
several high water marks in women’s advancement onto these
boards. There is an emerging polarisation between the cluster
of 24 companies who are entirely male led and the newly growing
cluster of 35 companies with multiple women directors – the
implications of this are discussed. There are now 100 women
occupying 123 directorships on FTSE 100 boards making up 11%
of total directorships. However, the number of female executive
directors fell to 13, and this is just 3.6% of 362 executive
seats. Women constitute 20% of all new director appointments
this year – the highest since Cranfield started monitoring.
Thirty women were appointed this year, of whom five had not
previously held FTSE 100 directorships.
In the FTSE 250, 113 companies have female directors, including
19 with female executive directors. Overall women hold 7.2%
of FTSE 250 board positions.
In 2007 the Female FTSE Report investigated the progress of
women onto the senior executive committees. There has been
a substantial increase of 40% of female senior executives
since 2006. This indicates that the pipeline to the corporate
board has finally been opened. There are now 122 females on
FTSE 100 executive committees. Not only was there an increase
in the number of female-held roles, but also in the diversity
of those roles. Whilst HR directors and company secretaries
dominated, there was a wide spread of other directors, covering
areas such as communications, operations, strategy development,
finance, marketing, and risk. We also examined FTSE 250 companies
and found a further 122 female senior executives. We have,
therefore, identified a substantial pool of female talent
for future FTSE 100 director positions, of almost 400 women.
The challenge is to make the boardroom more gender diverse
and we make some recommendations on how to achieve this.
Biography
Ruth
is a researcher at the International Centre for Women Leaders.
As well as the Female FTSE Index and Report, Ruth’s other
research looks at the impact of role models on the identity
formation of senior business women in the banking sector.
She has spoken at many academic and practitioner conferences,
and was nominated, with Val Singh, for a Best Paper Award
at the American Academy of Management Conference, 2006. She
has written numerous conference papers and a number of book
chapters.
Prior to this, following initial academic training in psychology,
Ruth had a varied career including 9 years as an entrepreneur,
setting up and running a company within the travel
industry, based in London and the French Alps. After successfully
selling the business in 2001, she worked as a Business Psychologist
and management development consultant. Her work included development
of high potential talent, focusing on emotional intelligence
and cognitive processing, working extensively in the engineering/aerospace
sector.
