If we want true gender equality in the boardroom, we must go beyond box-ticking

There are now no all-male boards in the FTSE 350.

The government-backed Hampton-Alexander Review has found the number of women on boards rose from 682 in October 2015 to 1,026 in January this year. That represents a rise from 21.9 per cent to 34.3 per cent, meaning a target for at least a third of directorships belonging to women has been met.

That’s a major milestone, and one I admit, I did not think would be possible to reach in such a short time. Campaigners like the 30% Club, which set the original target of a minimum of 30 per cent of FTSE100 directors being female (a level the higher index surpassed in 2018), have every right to feel proud. The boardrooms of Britain’s leading companies are transformed.

Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go. In the FTSE 350, there remain 16 so-called “one and done” companies – with only one female representative. The very phrase tells you everything. We have made substantial progress, but if equality is to be truly permanent and go deeper, beyond high-level box-ticking and tokenism, it is nowhere near far enough.

Just as telling as the 16 laggards is the fact there are only eight women chief executives in the FTSE 100. Eight, out of 100. Suddenly, 8 per cent looks less of a cause for celebration. There are more CEOs called Andrew in the FTSE100 than there are women chief executives. Similarly, a study by executive search firm, Sapphire Partners, shows that only 13 per cent of FTSE 100 executives are women (11 per cent in the FTSE 250).

These are the percentages that matter most. Appointing non-executives to attend a certain number of board meetings a year is one thing, having females in large numbers in executive roles, actually managing businesses day to day, is quite another. Until we reach a point where much greater proportions of our senior management layers are female, we cannot claim to have anything approaching gender balance.

The suspicion, too, is that while attitudes have shifted, they have not moved by much. Yes, there are more women sitting on boards, but they are non-executives. It’s worrying that companies secure their three females – or in the case of the 16, they appoint one – from outside, and then they appear to drop the issue and to move on. Been there, got the T-shirt, or here, the women biographies and portrait pictures in the directorial line-up. Job done.

I’ve not detected a radical change in thinking, not in private at least. In the bars, dining societies and golf clubs where Corporate Man gathers, the views expressed are exactly the same as they ever were. If the name of a well-known businesswoman or female politician is mentioned, it’s frequently accompanied by a sexist witticism – perhaps more sotto voce today, but uttered nevertheless. The boys leer as they’ve always done.

What was often noticeable, attending gatherings of the 30% Club or events where inequality would be raised was how few men there were. The ones present were of a type. They were boardroom heavyweights. They believed in the cause alright, but they were grandees, of a certain age, the chairman of this or that, towards the end of their careers. Absent were representatives from the tier below, men from the chief executive ranks. Chairmen choose their boards, but the CEOs run the show. Their support was not in evidence.

All is not lost, however. Nikhil Rathi, new chief of the Financial Conduct Authority, has recruited a team of women from business and law enforcement across the City to senior executive posts at the watchdog. Stephanie Cohen from BlackRock becomes chief operating officer; Jessica Rusu is the FCA’s newly-created chief data, information and intelligence officer; Sarah Pritchard is made executive director of markets; Emily Shepperd is appointed executive director of authorisations; Clare Cole is the regulator’s new director of market oversight. It’s unprecedented and a bold statement of intent.

Doubtless, there will be male muttering at Rathi’s move. The FCA women will be overseeing 60,000 City firms, the vast majority of them entirely dominated by men.

Significantly, Rathi was hired to alter the focus of the FCA, to make the organisation more aligned with consumers. The feeling had developed that the regulator had lost sight of the very people it was set up to protect. As a body that had mostly men in its key jobs, there was a nagging sense of male police officers rounding up their mates. Given that the behaviour the authority invariably was having to deal with was concerned aggression, greed and recklessness – attributes associated with men, which came to the fore during the banking crash of 2008 – and as there were relatively few actual prosecutions, it all seemed far too cosy. The new FCA team is unlikely to be so easily moved. They are likely to be less inclined to toe the corporate line and keep the little person, the ordinary saver and investor, firmly in their sights.

Passing the 30 per cent threshold for FTSE 350 boardroom representation is enormously welcome, but the FCA’s move is the one that should make the City sit up and take notice.