According to the EOC, women make up just 10 percent of directors of FTSE 100 companies and barely 20 percent of Parliament, according to Sex and Power: Who Runs Britain? 2007, the Equal Opportunities Commission’s annual survey looking at women in senior positions across the public and private sector.
In its last report before the 30-year-old EOC comes to an end in Autumn 2007, the EOC points out that the pace of change at the top in many areas remains painfully slow, and in some cases has even gone into reverse — despite the massive growth of women in work and public life.
At the very top, ethnic minority women are especially under represented, accounting for just 0.4 percent of FTSE 100 directors and 0.3 percent of Parliamentarians. Ethnic minority women account for 5.2 percent of the population and 3.9 percent of the labour market and this percentage is growing and increasingly well qualified. Yet, an EOC survey of employers in local labour markets with above average black and Asian populations found that two-thirds of those who employ black or Asian women had none in senior roles.
The EOC has calculated that nearly 6,000 women are ‘missing’ from the more than 33,000 top spots across the public and private sector included in the survey.
“These troubling findings show just how slow the pace of change has been in powerful British institutions,” says Jenny Watson, the Chair of the EOC. “They suggest it’s time not just to send out the head-hunters to find some of those ‘missing women’, but to address the barriers that stand in their way. Thirty years on from the Sex Discrimination Act, women rightly expect to share power. But as our survey shows, that’s not the reality. We all pay the price when Britain’s boardrooms and elected chambers are unrepresentative. Our democracy and local communities will be stronger if women from different backgrounds are able to enjoy an equal voice. In business, no one can afford to fish in half the talent pool in today’s intensely competitive world. As the EOC enters its final year, we are calling for change to make it possible for men and women to share power in the future. Asking for flexible working still spells career death for too many women in today’s workplace, and as a consequence women with caring responsibilities all too often have to ‘trade down’ to keep working. Extending the right to ask for flexible working to everyone in the workplace would change that culture and enable more women to reach the top. And political parties need to continue to take full advantage of the laws that allow positive action to enable more women to be selected as candidates at national level to ensure that the progress made here doesn’t go into reverse.”