A Step Towards Women In Leadership: UK Hits 33% Female Target On FTSE Boards
The number of women on FTSE boards has risen by 50% since 2015, and UK government targets for 33% female representation on FTSE 100, 250 and 350 boards have all been achieved, according to the latest and final report from the government’s Hampton-Alexander Review. It is a journey that started in 2010, when Lord Davies began his independent review on the lack of women in FTSE boardrooms, and then set voluntary targets to get progress. Hampton-Alexander was established to carry the baton on from Lord Davies, and it has been tireless with a ‘carrot and stick’ approach in getting a mind-set to budge, and allow change.
(I know, because I started this blog here on this first website when I followed Lord D around from August 2010, listening and watching at diversity events at what was said and what was unsaid, or said privately in confidence- the intelligence that lets you know just how hard it is to get culture change.)
It’s a tremendous achievement, but whether it represents the “changing face of business” as suggested will take time to ascertain. Representation by gender can be orchestrated to some extent without fundamentally confronting other challenges. For the government, it “underlines the success of the UK’s voluntary, business-led approach.” This was, during the women in boards drive over the last decade+, fuelled in part by a desire not to give in to EU talk of “quotas” to achieve gender diversity.
Men still dominate in the upper ranks of the UK’s top firms, as the government acknowledges with its news tonight. But 220 of the FTSE 350 companies now meet the Hampton-Alexander target of having at least 33% of their board positions held by women, a figure which has quadrupled from just 53 in 2015. In 2021, there are no longer any All-Male boards in the FTSE 350, something many will be extremely grateful for, in terms of global reputation for best practice in corporate governance and innovation moving forwards after the Brexit transition.
The only remaining FTSE All -Male board, Aston Martin Lagonda plc, changed that with an appointment on January 28, 2021, just squeaking in before the last ever HA Review - but picked up immediately by Morningstar, and investors . Aston Martin and Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) share ties and Jaguar has just announced a commitment into only electric cars by 2030, alongside the UK government’s commitment to green energy and its leadership of COP 26.
The steps leading here - via Hampton-Alexander Review, via Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). February 23, 2021.
“The lack of women in the boardroom is where it all started a decade ago, and it’s the area where we have seen the greatest progress. But now, we need to achieve the same - if not more- gains for women in leadership” said Denise Wilson, CEO of the Hampton-Alexander Review.
And she summed up the knowledge but also the unspoken frustration of more than a decade fighting this fight when she said: “The supply of capable, experienced women is full-to-over-flowing. 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.”
There are only four companies in the FTSE 350 with both a woman Chair and CEO - and it is taken as “normal” that the rest have male leadership. What we take as “normalcy” in business might need questioning at the same time as we are questioning just about everything about sustainable business models post-pandemic, in a world where stakeholders from baby boomers to millennials are crying out for action on climate, but also on real diversity and inclusion.
The UK economy would benefit from using all its human capital in the best possible way, across gender, age, ability, race and ethnicity. It will not be clear until we can see the full report from Hampton-Alexander here, whether the stats on race and ethnicity in leadership in the UK are in any way impacted by these appointments of women - or whether this success is primarily a product of networking and sponsorship within existing circles.
Because unless this news changes the fact that we are going backwards in the UK on senior business representation across race and ethnicity, businesses across the world, including the UK, will keep waking up to the need to connect better with their stakeholders.
The Davies Review more than a decade ago focused on the need for gender diversity alone - an important part of the real cognitive diversity (considered on Board Talk earlier) necessary to meet new and fast moving challenges for sustainable business. But post pandemic, it is even more clear it is by no means the only one.
Main image: Final report, Hampton Alexander Review, via @beisgovuk February 23, 2021.
