The representation of women on the boards of large corporation is a raging issue all round the world. We analysed 11 large companies listed on the London Stock Exchange to see how gender diverse their boards are. We randomly selected eleven FTSE 100 companies and used information on their websites to determine the composition of their boards by gender.
Whilst recent reports show that women are gaining more seats on boards of large British corporations, we wanted to see what percentage they make up in the boards of specific companies.
Our analysis included the following companies: HSBC Holdings, Barclays, Diageo, Unilever, AstraZeneca, British American Tobacco (BAT), Vodafone Group, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Rio Tinto and Tesco. These companies represent diverse sectors from banking to mining, to retail and manufacturing.
These are the findings we made.
1. There are still fewer women then men on the boards of large companies.
2. Overall, among the 11 analysed companies, we established male directors accounted for double the number of female directors. Therefore, for every female director there were two male directors.
3. The company with the smallest board had 10 directors (Diageo) while the one with largest had 18 directors (HSBC Holdings). However, none of the companies had more than 5 female directors on their boards.
4. The worst performers among the 11 companies we analysed were Rio Tinto which had two female directors out of a total of 11 followed by Barclays which had three female directors in a board of 13.
5. The best performing of the 11 companies in terms of gender representation on their boards were two companies; Anglo–Swedish multinational pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, and the British–Dutch oil company Royal Dutch Shell.
The two companies each had a board of 12 directors out of which five were female, thus women accounted for over 40% of their boards. Diageo also did well with a board comprised of 40% women - four female directors and six male directors
FTSE 100 companies have been urged to have a minimum of 30% women representation on their boards by 2020. Our analysis has shown that overall women are still underrepresented on the boards of some of the UK's largest companies. However, the great news is that some companies have made huge progress and have attained gender diversity well beyond the 30% targets that governments and lobbies have been pushing for.
Do you know other companies doing well on gender diversity on their boards? Do tell us about it!