Report: The female FTSE Board Report 2018

Since 1999, Cranfield School of Management has released an annual Female FTSE benchmarking report, which provides a regular measure of the number of women executive directors on the corporate boards of the UK's top 100 companies.

Key findings

• Since October 2017 the percentage of women on FTSE 100 boards has increased from 27.7 per cent to 29 per cent. If the current pace continues it is possible to reach the targeted 33 per cent by the end of 2020.
• In total 264 women hold 305 directorships on FTSE 100 boards. The percentage of female Non-Executive Director (NED) positions is at the all-time high of 35.4 per cent, while the percentage of female executive positions has flatlined at 9.7 per cent.
• Seven women hold a Chair position and 18 hold Senior Independent Directorships. A further 85 women hold 95 Chair roles on the various committees across FTSE 100 boards.
• In contrast, the percentage of women on FTSE 250 boards has only increased marginally from 22.8 per cent in October 2017 to 23.7 per cent. The percentage of female executive directorships has dropped from 7.7 per cent to 6.4 per cent and the number of all male boards has increased to ten.

The report concludes that despite a large amount of activity around gender diversity, there appears to be a complete lack of progress in developing the female executive pipeline, hence the report’s title “Busy going nowhere”.