MAR WINDOW

You’d be forgiven for assuming matters are improving, but a handful of recent reports would prove otherwise. Research from Co-operative Asset Management and The Observer newspaper found just 242 of 2,742 seats on FTSE-350 boards occupied by women. Out of 970 executive board positions, women hold 34.

In the FTSE-100, there are fewer women at executive director level and, thanks to the recession, the overall number of women on FTSE-100 boards is the same as 2008, according to this year’s Female FTSE report by Cranfield School of Management.

Even in industries that are traditionally more popular among women employees — the law, media and education — the higher up the corporate ladder you climb, the more men outnumber women, according to the government’s Equalities Office Women in Senior Positions,2009.

Only 19 percent of partners in top 100 UK law firms are women, and although 73 percent of jobs in education are filled by women, they hold only 56.2 percent of manager or senior official positions, according to the Equalities Office report Women in Senior Positions.

Then there is the imbalance in pay, which the Office for National Statistics puts at an average of 12 per cent. For company directors, the gap is even wider. The latest Institute of Directors and Croner Reward survey, published in November, found women executive and non-executive directors earn 22 per cent less, on average, than men in the same positions, and raising questions around how merit is rewarded in UK workplaces.