Promoting women to the higher echelons of management will improve firms’ risk management, encourage debate around strategy and help them focus on longer term objectives, the ABI said in a report published today. The ABI represents insurers managing 1.7 trillion pounds ($2.7 trillion) in assets.
“Board members with diverse perspectives are more likely to challenge previously held assumptions and break down the tendency toward ‘group think’ that can arise where a board is composed solely of like-minded individuals,” the report said. “Overall, women remain poorly represented in corporate boardrooms.”
The European Commission last year requested publicly traded firms to voluntarily commit to having women make up 30 percent of their boards by 2015. The proportion of women in boardrooms of the U.K.’s biggest 100 companies is 14.2 percent this year, up from 13.4 percent in 2010, the ABI said.
Mervyn Davies, former chairman of Standard Chartered Plc, recommended that FTSE 100 companies increase the proportion of women on their boards to 25 percent in a report in February. It will take more than 70 years to achieve gender parity in U.K. boardrooms at the current rate of change, he said.
“Boards with better gender balance pay more attention to audit, and risk oversight and control,” the ABI report said. “They also appear to be better at explicitly identifying criteria for measuring and monitoring the implementation of corporate strategy as compared to all-male boards.”
Companies should recognize they have a responsibility for promoting women and publish targets for gender diversity in their annual reports “wherever possible,” the ABI said. The group is “strongly skeptical” of quotas because they would encourage promoting people without the right skill set, it said.
“Promoting greater diversity in any form is not just a numbers game or an exercise in political correctness,” the ABI said.
Do we agree?
Do we think that the Davies Report is a vital component in driving more and more women into positions of influence and impact across the UK?
Do we consider male infleunce in teh same way - ie. that's is the position of men on PLC Boards who we believe wield the most influence in the country?
Do women have to accept that if this is not one of their ambitions in life, then they'll just have to concede that they will never have genuine equality of influence....?
Join the Independent Women Ambition Debates http://bit.ly/q128mB
