As the fall-out continues for Goldman Sachs, the recently published UK parliamentary Treasury committee report, “Women in the City”, makes timely reading. For those championing an increase in the number of women on British bank boards, this latest debacle is manna from heaven. You can almost hear them stamping their Ferragamos as they mount their soapboxes: “If a woman had been in charge, it wouldn't have happened!”
It is a rum conundrum that in 21st-century Britain, senior corporate woman is still a rare species. According to the Treasury committee, which quotes the Female FTSE Board Report 2009 compiled by Cranfield School of Management, there are only four female chief executives of FTSE 100 companies. In banking, the statistics are bleak: only 9 per cent of board members of FTSE 100 banks are female and the proportion of women executive directors is 2 per cent.
The City might look to Scandinavia for one possible solution. Norway introduced quotas for female directors of listed companies in 2005. “All-male boards do not represent the company very well – or the markets they serve,” says Elin Hurvenes, the Norwegian founder of the Professional Boards Forum, an advisory service that brings well-qualified women to the attention of company leaders. But does this suggest that board membership is a right rather than the culmination of a long career peppered with personal sacrifices? Indra Nooyi, chairwoman and chief executive of PepsiCo, has talked about the sheer hard work it took to become one of the highest ranking women in corporate America. Perhaps most women do not want to be so single-minded.