Women in board roles at UK’s biggest listed firms above 40% for first time

theguardian.com:

The proportion of women in board roles in Britain’s biggest listed companies has risen above 40% for the first time, according to analysis that suggests only 10 of the UK’s 350 largest listed companies still have all-male executive teams.

The number of women on boards in the blue-chip FTSE 100 companies and the mid-sized FTSE 250 companies rose by 3% in 2022, according to the government-backed FTSE women leaders review, published on Tuesday.

However, it found UK companies were failing to appoint women to leadership positions below board level at the same rate, with only 33.5% of executive committee or their direct reports being women. In the top 50 private companies, analysed for the first time this year, the proportion of women in non-board leadership roles was slightly higher, at 34.3%.

The representation of women on FTSE 350 public company boards has been gradually improving in recent years, with demands from shareholders for diversity in the people running British businesses.

The government-backed review had set a voluntary target of 40% women on boards by 2025, although that milestone is still well short of the 51% of women in the UK population.

Ministers have declined to introduce mandatory targets for women on boards, as the EU has committed to implement. Kemi Badenoch, the business and trade secretary who also holds the women and equalities ministerial brief, said the increase in the number of women on boards during 2022 showed that “change doesn’t always require top-down interventions but can occur when everyone is pushing in the same direction”.

Jemima Olchawski, the chief executive of the Fawcett Society, which campaigns for gender equality, said: “It’s really good and important that we are seeing progress on this