More women in the boardroom? Never mind the equality, watch the performance
Successful businesswomen may scoff at the proposal of quotas for women in boardrooms — and many men will dismiss it as Euro-correctness gone mad (see Matthew Lynn, page 17). But I suggest that anyone who hopes to collect a private pension should welcome the idea, for purely selfish reasons.
A report by former trade minister Lord Davies of Abersoch this week was expected to call for ‘voluntary targets’ to bring the proportion of women directors of FTSE 350 companies up to one in four by 2015, compared to current ratios of one in eight for the top hundred companies and one in 13 for the next 250. The word is that if voluntary action doesn’t break the glass ceiling for the ladies, statutory quotas could follow.
This means upwards of 600 new senior posts for women over the next four years – matched by 600 middle-aged chaps on the career scrapheap.
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