The number of women on the boards of FTSE 100 companies has almost doubled in the past four years. Women now account for 23.5 percent of the directors on boards of FTSE 100 companies, 1.5 percentage points short of the government’s target of 25 percent female representation, according to the 2015 annual report on board diversity from Lord Davies of Abersoch.
The number of female directors on the 100 boards has increased by 194 from four years ago, when women accounted for just 12.5 percent of all directors in the index, to the current total of 263.
‘The rate of change we have seen at FTSE 100 companies over the last four years has been remarkable,’ says Davies in the foreword to his report. ‘The voluntary approach is working: boards are getting fixed. We now have to increase the low number of female chairs and executive directors on boards and address the loss of talented, senior women from the executive pipeline.’
Davies says that, for the first time, the FTSE 100 has no all-male boards, compared with 21 all-male boards four years ago. Over the same time period, the number of companies in the index with boards that are at least 25 percent female has increased to 41 from 12. Diageo and InterContinental Hotels now lead the FTSE 100 in terms of female board representation, with each having a board that is 45.5 percent female.
But the number of female chairs on FTSE 100 boards increased by only one in the last four years, from two to three, and the number of female chief executives has remained unchanged at five. Women now account for 8.6 percent of executive directors of companies in the FTSE 100, up from 5.5 percent four years ago.
Davies adds that, at 18 percent, female representation is still very low on boards of firms in the broader FTSE 250, though this is up from 7.8 percent four years ago. The number of women executive directors increased to 4.6 percent from 4.2 percent and the number of women chief executives dropped to nine from 10. The FTSE 250 still has 23 all-male boards, which Davies says is ‘23 too many’, although it’s down from 131 four years ago.
