The United Kingdom is failing to fill the mandatory board quota of women in workplaces, and this comes as a deterrent to current efforts to encourage hiring women to senior management roles.
According to the Guardian, after analyzing 50 of the most valuable companies from the UK, only 14 percent of executive committee positions are being filled by women. These positions are intended to be the pool from which boardroom vacancies are filled in the future. However these numbers are lower than on FTSE 100 boards, with latest results showing that 17.3 percent of blue chip- directors are women, according to the Professional Board Forum.
Viviane Reding, who is the European commissioner for justice and rights, will be presenting her plan for a mandatory quota for female board directors on October 24, 2012. Reding is being faced with stiff opposition from EU’s member states. According to Redings plans, by the year 2020, at least 40 percent of board members should be women.
Cranfield University School of Management’s Prof Susan Vinnicombe has also spoken about how they are confident of filling 30 percent to 40 percent of boardroom seats with women, however, they needed to have more female executives in positions that would be able to sustain numbers.
