THERE IS no representation of women on the boards of the largest private equity firms in the UK, a new study reveals.
The research, conducted by The Pipeline, an advocate for executive women in business, indicates that companies may have blind spots when it comes to promoting senior female staff.
While some industries, including transport, health, electricity, utilities, and insurance, are making strides toward gender parity with over 40 per cent of executive leadership roles held by women, others like automobiles and mining are below 10 per cent.
It highlights that women at the board level are more likely to hold “functional” roles, such as HR or marketing, rather than securing commercial roles responsible for profit and loss functions.
The report also identifies a “woman tax” where women are given extra tasks alongside their regular duties, unlike their male counterparts.
Despite some progress, with the average percentage of women in executive committee roles in the FTSE 350 surpassing 30 per cent, the study notes that the pace of promoting women to top boardroom positions is slow.
“One of the conclusions that is inescapable from the data is that women count, but men count more,” said Professor Geeta Nargund, the founder and chief executive of Create Fertility, who wrote the foreword to the Women Count report.
The report underscores the lack of progress in the most senior City roles in Britain, revealing that only 13 per cent of FTSE 100 companies have a female CEO.
Sue O’Brien, the chair of The Pipeline, said: “The glacial rate of progress towards gender parity demonstrated in our report is a serious cause for concern.
“Businesses must not shy away from some of these uncomfortable truths: leaders need to examine their workplace culture and ensure that their promotion procedures are truly equitable as well as being merit-based. Taking care of, developing, and investing in the workforce you already have is a priority,” she added.
Although there has been a slight improvement from four per cent in 2019, the overall figure for the wider FTSE 350 remains low at just nine per cent.
“Those women are not on track to get a CEO appointment,” said Nargund. “Companies need to have a quality pipeline of female talent at every level of the organisation”.
The study concludes that efforts to address barriers faced by women in the workplace need to be intensified to achieve more significant advancements in gender diversity at the top levels of corporate leadership.
This matters, said Nargund, because “any business that doesn’t have a broad gender balance in their leadership cadres is one that won’t focus enough on the very specific issues faced by women at work”.
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