Just 3% of top jobs held by women

ONLY 3% of executive directors at the UK’s top 350 companies are women, a study into boardroom equality revealed yesterday.

The survey by Co-operative Asset Management found women occupied 34 of the 970 executive director positions available across the firms.

More than 130 of the companies in the FTSE 350 Index do not have a single woman at board level, according to the research, which was commissioned by The Observer.

Just four companies have female chairmen, representing 1.3% of the total, while nine businesses, or 3%, have women chief executives.

Women fared slightly better in the numbers of non-executive posts, which do not carry managerial power, but they still only account for 204 of the 1,772 jobs available.

“There is a tendency to recruit in one’s own image,” the report said.

“This can be down to simple discrimination or might simply be due to natural tendency to better understand people who are similar.

“Either way, the firm can miss out when it comes to promoting the right people.”

Companies scored points according to the proportion of women on the board, as well as according to their seniority.

Media group Pearson, which owns the Financial Times as well as the Penguin publishing business, was seen as the best performer.

The firm is one of a handful with a woman in the top position, with Marjorie Scardino as chief executive. It also has a female finance director and was hailed by the report for its progressive hiring policies.

Support services company Mitie, which also has women in its top two executive positions, came second in the chart, followed by supermarket chains Tesco and Sainsbury.

In all, women’s representation was found to stand at 8.8%, including both executive and non-executive positions.

This was despite stated equal opportunities policies at 94% of the firms surveyed.

Larger companies were found to score better than smaller ones, but the report said this could be partly because they have sufficient resources to fully consider the issues raised in the study.

The best performers were found to be in consumer facing industries and companies and in so-called “people” businesses, such as media.