GENDER INEQUALITY REMAINS A HOT ISSUE
A study of Lancashire Business View’s latest Hot 100 list of the county’s most successful SMEs has highlighted a major imbalance in the number of male and female directors in their boardrooms.
The work, carried out with PM+M, which puts together the annual list with this magazine, has revealed that out of the companies’ 344 directors, just 71 were women.
That’s just around one fifth (20.6 per cent) of the total, which means there is still a long way to go when it comes to representation in businesses which are the backbone of the county’s economy.
Meanwhile, new figures show the UK has climbed to second in the international rankings for women’s representation on boards at FTSE100 level.
Today nearly 40 per cent of UK FTSE100 board positions are held by women, compared with just 12.5 per cent 10 years ago.
Miranda Barker, chief executive of East Lancashire Chamber of Commerce, said: “Lancashire at this moment is riding high when it comes to well-placed women in senior roles across the county.
“We have a woman leader and a women chief executive of Lancashire County Council,
a woman chief executive and a woman chair of the LEP.
“There are women chief executives at all three of the chambers, the commercial director of AMRC NW, chief executive of the North West Aerospace Alliance are women.
“And we see council chief executives and leaders and prominent company directors across Lancashire, leading aerospace and advanced manufacturing firms.
“However, the figures produced by Lancashire Business View highlight the problem that exists in our SME sector.
“There is obviously still a long way to go. Businesses here have to show more faith in women and what they can achieve. Our successful female-led family businesses have a leading role to play.
“There are great examples of women leaders in many of our county’s most successful SMEs, we need to highlight them more and help the private sector to catch up.”
Melissa Conlon, commercial director at AMRC North West says organisations must better communicate the value of female leaders, create opportunities for female leadership and value and promote their female leaders.
She said: “There is still an insufficient number of female role models. In my experience, while many boards state that they encourage and want diversity they don’t know how to take advantage of it.
“In order to redress the balance, the overall pool of female candidates needs to increase, therefore organisations need to increase the number of senior females and establish mentoring, networking and return-ship programmes to encourage the development of female leaders.”
Vicky Lofthouse, chief executive of Lancaster and District Chamber of Commerce, said: “We are in this together and we all need to set the right examples for the leaders of the future. No more stereotypes, set great examples and let’s break the bias together. Women should have confidence in their own beliefs and ability.”
Meet our women of impact on page 16
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LANCASHIREBUSINESSVIEW.CO.UK
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IN VIEW
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