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The largest British companies in the list should have missed the goal of having women in 40 percent of the best executive roles by 2025, according to a campaign supported by the Government to strengthen women’s representation.
An overview of FTSE women’s leaders found that women made up 35.3 percent of higher leading roles – defined as those in the Executive Committee and Higher Managers just below that level – on FTSE 350 in 2024, putting companies on the road to miss 40 – a percentage goal this year.
While the largest Companies in the UK “within the striking distance of” completing the goal – increasing the female representation in the executive lines with 24.5 percent in 2017 – the pace of change “slowed down”, the audit annual report said on Tuesday.
“The goal may not be achieved by more than 2025. Because some companies still have less than a third of their leading roles that women have,” the report said. The end of this year indicates the deadline for Five -year review.
The companies made it Better progress About increasing the number of women on the plates. The campaign said that 43.4 percent of the Role of the Committee in 350 FTSE companies were held last year, 25 percent in 2015 and only 9.5 percent in 2011.
A Review of FTSE Women’s Leaders was launched in 2021 as a successor Hampton-Alexander and Davies reviews. In addition to the increasing goals for the committees, she received an extended part to watch higher executive roles.
Women make up 32.7 percent of the role of the FTSE 100 Executive Board, compared to 30.4 percent in 2023, but almost a third of the company has not yet exceeded the 33 percent threshold.
Marks and Spencer She was the FTSE 100 company with the largest number of women on his leadership team, followed by the educational company Pearson and the seller.
Meanwhile, the Fresnillo and Games Workshop Group, which makes Fantasy Game Warhammer, ranked as a group with the smallest share of women in leading roles.
“He encouraged himself, through many initiatives, to come to this label, and although the optics look good, there are still some real challenges,” said Pavita Cooper, chairman of 30% Club UK, campaigns led by chairs and chief managers to increase increase gender diversity at the level of board and higher management. “Women are not in the right roles to continue to get the best jobs.”
Cooper added that women in the roles of the Executive Committee often managed “support” of functions such as compliance and human resources, not the property of finances and the entire business divisions, which led to the “gap of power”.
The report comes given that on Tuesday he has announced associates separately on Tuesday separately by research proposed by women’s leaders on Tuesday “Double bind” When they take over the top job – they are criticized for too much ambitious or not ambitious enough.
“It’s a truly radiant double standard,” said Laura Sanderson, a co -founded head of Europe, the Middle East and India in Russell Reynolds.
The report, which looked at more than 20,000 articles covering almost 750 major executives at FTSE 100, S&P 500 and Euronext 100 and includes comments from analysts, shareholders and policy donors, claims that women are more negatively perceived in public.
“Society often expects women in leadership positions to walk on the wire between being seen as competent, which requires to show ambitions and sympathetic, which often requires a reduction in ambition,” Sanderson said.
The Russell Reynolds report found that, although women represented only 11 percent of the total executive appointments of executive directors and 6 percent of the departure of executive directors in the world’s largest companies that were listed in the world in 2024, received significantly higher media attention.
The women’s executives received 1.25 times more mention than men and 1.7 times more attention, the number of articles, when they left the role. About 18 percent of the stories about the departure of men of executive directors were negative, while for women the figure was 28 percent.
