Women occupy two out of five board seats at FTSE 350 companies, reaching their target three years ahead of schedule, under a government-backed campaign to encourage greater female representation in executive roles.
The annual FTSE Women Leaders Review found 40.2 per cent of directors at the UK’s biggest listed companies were women last year, surpassing the voluntary threshold set for 2025, and up from just 9.5 per cent 11 years ago.
A follow-up to the Hampton-Alexander and Davies Review found that almost a fifth of FTSE 350 boards have female seats, although there are only 21 female chief executives in major listed markets.
FTSE 100 listed companies with the highest proportion of female board representatives include drinks group Diageo, online car marketplace Auto Trader and water company Severn Trent.
Despite having a female chief executive, drug maker GSK has the lowest number of women of all blue-chip companies, followed by retailer Frasers Group, investment manager St James’s Place and mining company Antofagasta.
The campaign says its focus over the next three years is 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 that “the quiet, water-cooler conversation about the lack of women from the past has evolved into a core and critical business topic”.
He added that British female representation was now second only to France in the world, where a 40 per cent quota of councilors for women had been in place since 2017, which he described as a “significant achievement” for the voluntary scheme.
The review concluded there was “still more to do” to raise 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.
The data included the top 50 private British companies included in the report for the first time with the proportion of women on the Board an average of 31 percent.
The review found higher levels of disparity, however, with a third reporting more than 40 percent of directors were women, while more than half reported below-average female representation.
Some companies, such as retailer John Lewis, construction company Laing O’Rourke and building society Nationwide, have female representation in senior management positions. But 19 companies have an all-male board or only one female director.
The report’s authors say making direct comparisons with board-level representation in listed companies is difficult because of differences in the way top-level management is structured in some private businesses.
The proportion of women in FTSE 100 companies below board level – including gender balance on executive committees and managers reporting directly to the executive committee – will increase to 34.3 per cent, from 32.5 per cent in 2021. Women make up 41 per cent of successful candidates for all role available last year.
In the FTSE 250, the number of women in leadership teams will rise to 33 per cent, from 30.1 per cent in 2021, with 40 per cent of leadership roles held by women. For the top 50 private companies, the figure for executive committees, and direct reports, was 34.3 percent.
The review found that across the FTSE 350, 1,202 out of 3,000 board seats and 6,660 out of 20,000 leadership roles are held by women.
Of the 50 private companies asked to take part in the survey, six did not provide data, including Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos, JCB, a company owned by the Bamford family, wholesaler Bestway and retailer New Look.