UK companies not expecting to meet board gender targets

The largest public companies in the UK are increasingly pessimistic about meeting boardroom gender diversity targets, according to a new survey from ICSA and the Financial Times.

The latest FT–ICSA Boardroom Bellwether Survey found that 31% of the 350 top companies on the London Stock Exchange are not expecting to meet the government target of 25% female representation on boards by the end of 2015.

Of the firms that did not expect to meet the target this year, almost two-thirds (63%) reported that they did not have plans to do so “in the short, medium, or long term”.

The ICSA notes that this is “the most pessimistic result since December 2012”. The Boardroom Bellwether Survey is compiled twice a year, and shows “how boards are responding to the challenges of the economy and the wider business and social climate.”

The government recommendation that at least 25% of board members should be women was originally set out in a report in 2011. The target was introduced as a voluntary measure, by way of an alternative to mandatory quotas.

Nina Smith has written for IZA World of Labor about gender quotas for boards of directors. Noting that the evidence does not support introducing gender quotas on economic grounds, she argues that: “Policymakers may have to change their focus from requiring quotas for the top of an organization to the much broader task of getting a more balanced gender division of careers within the family, for instance by encouraging more fathers to take advantage of parental leave schemes.”

Read more on this story at Forbes.

Related articles:
Gender quotas on boards of directors by Nina Smith
Gender diversity in teams by Ghazala Azmat