Fewer women board directors

FTSE 100 companies have failed to appoint more women to the board, according to the annual Cranfield Female FTSE Index and Report.

The report reveals the proportion of directorships held by women on the FTSE 100 corporate boards is stuck at the 2008 figure of 12%. The number of companies with female executive directors is down to 15 (from 16) and the number of boards with multiple women directors has fallen to 37 from 39.

There are currently 113 women holding 131 FTSE 100 directorships, compared to 834 men holding 947 directorships. The overall number of companies with women on their boards has in fact gone down, with one in four companies now having exclusively male boards. There are only four female CEOs in the FTSE 100, sitting on the boards of Alliance Trust, Burberry, Pearson and Anglo American.

The banking sector is again singled out for its poor performance where just 9% of the board members of the five banks in the FTSE 100 are female (down from 12% last year). Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland have no women at all on their boards.