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women will be making their mark within
the next decade or so.
BaronessWheatcroft, who is also a
Non-Executive Director at Fiat Chrysler
Automobiles, believes lessons are being
learnt.‘Financial services is a complicated
area,’ she says.‘We’ve seen in the banks
how culture can go badly wrong. It’s
slowly dawning now that you need a
mixture of talents, skills and personalities
at the board table.’
What else needs to be done to help
women achieve better representation
and to reduce the gender gap? Role
models are needed,
says Lily Lapenna,
Chief Executive
of MyBnk, an
organisation which
teaches the young
about finance
and enterprise.
Mentoring and
encouraging more girls and women to
study finance are among the suggestions
made by LawrenceWintermeyer, Chief
Executive of Innovate Finance, an
organisation working in the area of
finance and technology.‘We are going
to have to do a lot more to get women
in technology and business roles if we
are to have a 50/50 representation in
business,’ he says.
Meanwhile, although it is coming
down, the gender pay gap was still 19%
for full-time workers in 2014, according
to figures from the Office for National
Statistics
3
.The
government hopes
to reduce this
further; fromApril
2018
4
employers
with 250 staff or
more will have to
disclose how much
they are paying their
ANALYSIS
WOMEN IN BUSINESS
WOMEN ON BOARDS
•
Women hold 26% of FTSE-100
directorships, according to the
Professional Boards Forum.
•
Women hold 22.3% of seats on
Fortune-100 companies, according to
the 2020 WoB Diversity Index.
•
But women account for just 9.6%
of executive directorships on FTSE-100
companies, according to research last
year by MWM Consulting.
WOMEN AND PAY
The average pay gap for full-time work
was about 10% in 2014, down from
15% in 2002; and for all workers,
including both full- and part-time
(in which women predominated), the
gap was 19% in 2014, down from 27%
in 2002, according to the Office for
National Statistics.
THE WEALTHIEST WOMEN
The top 10 wealthiest women in
Britain own £46 billion in assets between
them, according to the
Sunday Times
Rich List
. The top 10 individuals and
couples overall own more than twice
that amount – £100 billion.
WOMEN
THE FACTS
AND THE STATS
Whenwomen are
involved there’s amuch
more collective
approach
Balance sheet
Women are beginning to make their
mark on the boardrooms of UK companies, but the gap
needs to be closed further.
male and female employees, and the
government will publish a league table
of the results.
Boards and their companies will
be different when women are better
represented, say the women who already
have seats on them and on their
committees. Lily Lapenna, a member
of the MoneyAdvice Service’s Financial
Capability Board, says:‘When women
are involved there’s a sense of inclusivity
and a much more collective approach.’
Noël Harwerth adds:‘There is a
different dynamic in boards that have
diversity. Boards function differently
when people approach problem-solving
from different perspectives.’
1,2,4
www.gov.uk,2016
3
www.ons.gov.uk, 2016
ALISON BRITTAIN
CAROLINE MCCALL
LILY LAPENNA
NOËL HARWERTH
THE INVESTOR
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