Women in the boardroom
The proportion of women in the boardroom of the top 150 companies continues to rise, from 40% to 43% this year. While 53% of all non-executive directors are women, men still dominate the ranks of executive directors (81%).
67% (103) of companies reached the 40% target for women on boards at our cut-off date, up from 53% (80) in 2023.
29 boards achieved gender parity in 2024, up from 18 in 2023. However, 91 boards comprise at least 50% female non-executives.
No board member has self-identified as non-binary.
Female representation by role
Women in senior board and leadership roles
New targets were proposed in 2022 by the FTSE Women Leaders Review and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to advance women’s representation on boards. They recommended that by the end of 2025 all FTSE 350 companies should have at least one woman among the four senior board positions of chair, senior independent director, CEO, and CFO.
Gender distribution in top four roles
Distribution of women who occupy the top four roles
At our 30 April 2024 cut-off date, 107 (71%) of the top 150 FTSE companies had at least one woman in one of these four roles, up from 90 (60%) in 2023 and 77 (51%) in 2022. No board has appointed women to all four of these leadership roles. By contrast, there were still 43 boards where men occupy all four roles.
24%
of the four senior board roles are held by women (20% in 2023)
46%
of senior independent directors are women (35% in 2023)
43
of new board leadership appointments went to women (34% in 2023)
67%
of new female senior leadership appointments were for senior independent directors
4
companies have women in three of the top four senior leadership positions, compared with two companies in 2023.
Croda (chair, SID, CFO)*
Diageo (CEO, CFO, SID)*
Hargreaves Lansdown (chair, SID, CFO)
Severn Trent (chair, CEO, CFO)
* The CEOs of both Croda and Diageo have since departed.
24
companies have two women in the top four senior leadership positions,
compared with 23 in 2023.
Admiral (CEO, SID)
Aviva (CEO, CFO)
BAE Systems (chair, SID)
BP (SID, CFO)
BT (SID, CEO)
Burberry (SID, CFO)
Darktrace (CEO, CFO) *
Dunelm (chair, CFO)
GSK (CEO, CFO)
Halma (chair, SID)
Imperial Brands (chair, SID)
Land Securities (SID, CFO)
M&G (SID, CFO)
Man Group (chair, CEO)
Pennon Group (chair, CEO)
Redrow (SID, CFO)
Rightmove (SID, CFO)
Rolls-Royce (chair, CFO)
RS Group (chair, CFO)
Softcat (SID, CFO)
Tate & Lyle (SID, CFO)
United Utilities (SID, CEO)
Weir Group (chair, SID)
WPP (SID, CFO)
* Darktrace delisted from the LSE on 1 October 2024
113
boards in which both the chair and CEO are men
3
boards in which both the chair and CEO are women (Man Group, Pennon Group, and Severn Trent)
Gender of board leadership combinations
|
Both women |
Both men |
| Chair and CEO |
3 |
113 |
| Chair and SID |
6 |
64 |
| Chair and CFO |
6 |
86 |
| SID and CEO |
4 |
80 |
| SID and CFO |
13 |
52 |
| CEO and CFO |
5 |
89 |
Women appointed to top four senior leadership positions (%)
|
Chair |
SID |
CEO |
CFO |
| % of total |
15% |
46% |
12% |
23% |
| % of newly appointed |
27% |
67% |
19% |
28% |
Our perspective – Women in board leadership positions
Boards have been focusing on the senior independent director (SID) role in an effort to meet the target set by the FTSE Women Leaders Review and the Financial Conduct Authority for FTSE 350 boards to have at least one woman in the roles of chair, SID, CEO, or CFO. Of the four roles, the SID role can be changed with least disruption, which likely explains why 31 out of 46 newly appointed SIDs were women (67%). This year 68 out of 149 SIDs are women (46%), compared with just 38 in 2021.
Gender balance among the other board roles is still a long way away, albeit moving slowly in the right direction. For example, in each of the past two years, there have been 22 chair appointments. This year six of the new chairs were women, two more than last year, bringing the total number of female chairs in our sample up to 22. The number of female chairs has not changed year on year, due to four companies with female chairs dropping out of the top 150 and two women replacing outgoing female chairs. By contrast, the number of female CEOs and CFOs has risen (to 18 and 31, respectively).
We continue to believe that the pipeline of potential chairs is growing as more and more women accumulate significant experience as plc non-executive directors, SIDs and committee chairs (today, 70% of remuneration committee chairs are women, and 36% of audit committee chairs).
Ethnic diversity
Parker Review targets
The Parker Review set a target for FTSE 250 boards to have at least one director from a minority ethnic background by December 2024. This followed the December 2021 deadline for FTSE 100 companies. At our 30 April 2024 cut-off date, 11 of the top 150 companies in our sample had not yet appointed such a director: four of these companies are in the FTSE 100 and seven are in the FTSE 250.
Directors with a minority ethnic background
12.5% of all directors (186 out of 1,515) self-identify as having a minority ethnic background. This compares with 13% in 2023 and 12% in 2022.
Directors are described here as “minority ethnic” only if they have self-identified as such; those whose ethnicity is undisclosed are excluded from our analysis. As described in Our Survey Approach, we have restricted our research to comply with the framework and targets set out by the Parker Review and the CBI’s Change the Race Ratio campaign. The chart below shows the breakdown of minority ethnic directors by role.
Directors from a minority ethnic background
|
% of total |
% who are women |
% who are UK nationals |
| All directors |
12% |
53% |
40% |
| Chairs |
6% |
11% |
33% |
| SIDs |
5% |
86% |
43% |
| NEDs (incl. SIDs) |
15% |
58% |
39% |
| CEOs |
6% |
0% |
33% |
| CFOs |
6% |
25% |
63% |
| All exec directors |
6% |
17% |
6% |
58% of minority ethnic directors are non-UK nationals. 26% of all minority ethnic directors are US citizens, 12% are Canadian citizens, and 9% are Indian citizens (these figures include directors with dual nationality).
Minority ethnic directors are most likely to be current or former CEOs (37%) or divisional CEOs and general managers with P&L experience (22%).
Of the 196 new directors appointed, just seven were from a minority ethnic background (4%).*
Of the 50 directors appointed to a listed company board for the first time, two (4%) were from a minority background.
* Providing detailed, comprehensive and up-to-date information on the minority ethnic background of directors has become increasingly difficult. First, not all directors choose to self-identify. Second, reporting is not consistent. Third, it is increasingly common for companies to report the number of minority ethnic directors on the board as a whole, but not to provide this information at the level of individual directors. While this is perfectly understandable, it does mean that our data on the ethnicity minority background of new directors in particular is likely to be incomplete.
Industry experience of board members
|
All directors |
Directors with minority ethnic background |
| Financial Services |
26% |
27% |
| Consumer |
23% |
20% |
| Technology, media and telecommunications |
10% |
9% |
| Industrial |
30% |
32% |
| Business professional services |
6% |
5% |
| Healthcare |
5% |
6% |
The intersectionality of gender and ethnic diversity
The proportion of minority ethnic women and men sitting on FTSE 150 boards is evenly balanced (121 men and 122 women, 8% each of the total). As the chart below shows, women with a minority ethnic background are, on average, younger than their male counterparts; they also have a shorter board tenure and are more likely to sit on multiple listed company boards.
Gender and ethnicity in the boardroom
|
All board members |
Female board members |
Minority ethnic women |
Male board members |
Minority ethnic men |
| Average age |
60 |
59.2 |
57.4 |
61 |
59.9 |
| Average tenure on board |
4.7 |
3.7 |
3.8 |
5.5 |
5.4 |
| Average # of external commitments |
1.8 |
2.1 |
2.1 |
1.7 |
1.9 |
| % of new directors |
12% |
50% |
2% |
50% |
2% |
| % of newly appointed first-time directors |
3% |
56% |
2% |
44% |
2% |
The combined number of all female directors (644) and male directors from a minority ethnic background (90) amounts to 734 — 48% of all directors in the top FTSE 150 companies. This year the 2024 US Board Index reports that for the first time 50% of all S&P 500 directors fall within this definition of diversity.
Non-national directors
We define non-national directors as having a nationality that differs from that of the company.
Non-national directors account for 37% of all board members (560 out of 1,513), a proportion that has not changed significantly over the past decade. In 2024, 21% of chairs and 37% of CEOs are non-nationals.
Non-national directors account for at least half of board directors in 47 companies (31%) and two-thirds of directors at 25 companies (16%). Coca-Cola HBC has eight different nationalities represented among its 13 directors.
Origin of board directors
Boardroom diversity – top 5 companies in the FTSE 150
Most women
- Man Group (71%, 5)
- Diageo (70%, 7)
- Severn Trent (67%, 6)
- Pennon Group, Softcat (63%, 5)
- Pearson (60%, 6)
Most non-nationals
- Glencore (100%, 8)
- Coca-Cola HBC (92%, 12)
- Flutter Entertainment (91%,10)
- Wizz Air (91%, 10)
- Network International (89%, 8)
Most directors who self-declared as with minority ethnic background
- Airtel Africa (73%, 8)
- Network International (56%, 5)
- Prudential (58%, 7)
- Endeavour Mining (44%, 5)
- Investec (42%, 5)
Most directors under 50
- Frasers (50%, 5)
- Auto Trader (44%, 4)
- Big Yellow (38%, 3)
- Darktrace (36%, 4)
- J Sainsbury (33%, 3), TBC Bank (33%, 3)
NB: Investec, Reckitt Benckiser and HSBC Holdings each have seven female directors, but don’t make the top five companies in percentage terms.