UK executive target for women met three years ahead of schedule

Women occupy two out of five board seats at FTSE 350 companies, reaching the target three years early, according to a government-backed campaign to encourage more female representation in executive roles.

The annual FTSE Women Leaders Review found 40.2 per cent of directors at the UK’s largest listed companies were women last year, surpassing the voluntary threshold set for 2025, and up from just 9.5 per cent 11 years ago.

The successor to the Hampton-Alexander and Davies Reviews found that almost a fifth of FTSE 350 boards have a woman chair, although there were just 21 female chief executives across the main listed markets.

The FTSE 100 listed companies with the highest proportion of female board representatives included drinks group Diageo, online car marketplace Auto Trader and water company Severn Trent.

Despite having a female chief executive, drugmaker GSK had the lowest number of women on its board of all the blue-chip companies, followed by retailer Frasers Group, investment manager St James’s Place and mining company Antofagasta.

The hushed, water-cooler conversation on the lack of women from yesteryear has evolved into a core and critical business topic.

The campaign said the focus over the next three years would be to encourage more women to be appointed to the biggest corporate roles, such as chief executive and finance director.

Denise Wilson, chief executive of the FTSE Women Leaders Review, said the “hushed, water-cooler conversation on the lack of women from yesteryear has evolved into a core and critical business topic”. 

She added that UK female representation was now second only to France globally, where a 40 per cent board membership quota for women has been in place since 2017, which she described as a “significant achievement” for a voluntary scheme.

The review concluded there was “still more to do” to lift female representation on FTSE 350 executive committees, which stood at 27 per cent last year. The number of all-male executive committees in the FTSE 350 fell to 10 from 54 in 2017.

Data covering the top 50 private UK companies was included in the report for the first time with the proportion of women on boards averaging about 31 per cent.

The review found higher levels of divergence, however, with a third reporting more than 40 per cent of directors were women, while more than half reported female representation well below the average.

Several companies, such as retailer John Lewis, construction company Laing O’Rourke and building society Nationwide, had high levels of female representation in senior management positions. But 19 companies had boards that were either all male or included just one woman director.

The report’s authors said making direct comparisons with board level representation at listed companies was difficult because of the difference in the way top level management was structured at some private businesses.

The proportion of women at FTSE 100 companies below the boardroom level — covering the gender balance on executive committees and managers who report directly to executive committee — increased to 34.3 per cent, up from 32.5 per cent in 2021. Women made up 41 per cent of successful candidates for all available roles last year.

In the FTSE 250, the number of women in the leadership teams increased to 33 per cent, up from 30.1 per cent in 2021, with 40 per cent of leadership roles going to women. For the top 50 private companies, the figure for the executive committee, and direct reports, stood at 34.3 per cent.

The review found that across the FTSE 350, 1,202 of the 3,000 board seats and 6,660 of the 20,000 leadership roles were held by women.

Of the 50 private companies asked to take part in the survey, six did not provide any data, including Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos, JCB, the company owned by the Bamford family, wholesaler Bestway and retailer New Look.