Reasons for Not Appointing Women to Company Boards Revealed

The team conducting the Government-backed Hampton-Alexander Review have revealed a list of the worst reasons they have heard from FTSE 350 Chairs and CEOs for not appointing women to company boards. 

The explanations include:

• ‘I don’t think women fit comfortably into the board environment’
• ‘There aren’t that many women with the right credentials and depth of experience to sit on the board - the issues covered are extremely complex’
• ‘Most women don’t want the hassle or pressure of sitting on a board’
• ‘Shareholders just aren’t interested in the make-up of the board, so why should we be?’
• ‘My other board colleagues wouldn’t want to appoint a woman on our board’
• ‘All the ‘good’ women have already been snapped up’
• ‘We have one woman already on the board, so we are done - it is someone else’s turn’

The number of women on boards has more than doubled in the FTSE 350 since 2011 according to the most recent statistics, and the number of all-male FTSE 350 company boards has fallen from 152 to 10. However, many companies are still refusing to move with the times. The Hampton-Alexander Review has challenged all FTSE 350 companies to make sure at least a third of their board members and leadership are women by 2020.

“Around a third of FTSE 350 companies still have very few women either on their boards or in senior leadership roles,” said Chair of the Hampton-Alexander Review, Sir Philip Hampton. “We used to hear these excuses regularly a few years ago, thankfully much less so now.”

“However, leaders expressing warm words of support but actually doing very little to appoint women into top jobs - or quietly blocking progress - are really not much better,” he added.

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Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.