How the U.K.’s approach to women on boards is improving gender diversity

03/07/22 • 18 min

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All Things Sustainable (formerly ESG Insider)

Ahead of International Women’s Day, we’re looking at how the U.K. is moving the needle on gender diversity in corporate boardrooms. Many countries have mandatory quotas for the minimum number of women on corporate boards. The U.K., in contrast, adopted a voluntary approach to improve gender balance in the business world. Has it worked?

In one important sense, yes: Nearly 40% of board seats at the U.K.’s top 100 companies are now filled by women, and notable gains have also been made at the board level of the U.K.’s 350 largest companies, according to a new report. However, there are still very few women CEOs or CFOs in the U.K., and only a third of leadership roles are held by women.

In this week’s episode of the ESG Insider podcast, we speak to Denise Wilson, Chief Executive of the FTSE Women Leaders Review, which published the report in February. Wilson describes how the decision to routinely and openly publish data naming and shaming companies that fall short of suggested gender-balance targets has acted as a nudge, persuading more businesses to appoint female board directors to meet growing investor and societal expectations on diversity.

To read more about gender diversity at global companies: https://www.spglobal.com/en/research-insights/featured/women-ceos-covid

To read more about gender diversity at U.S. companies: https://www.capitaliq.spglobal.com/web/client?auth=inherit#news/article?id=65743394&KeyProductLinkType=6

To read S&P Global Sustainable1 research on corporate diversity, equity and inclusion policies: https://www.spglobal.com/esg/csa/yearbook/articles/progress-toward-corporate-diversity-requires-more-than-ticked-boxes-and-token-hires

To subscribe to our new newsletter, The Social Equity & Impact Review: https://spgi-mkto.spglobal.com/Subscribe-The-Social-Equity--Impact-Review.html

We'd love to hear from you. To give us feedback on this episode or share ideas for future episodes, please contact hosts Lindsey Hall ([email protected]) and Esther Whieldon ([email protected]).

Photo credit: Getty Images

To read more about gender diversity at global companies: https://www.spglobal.com/en/research-insights/featured/women-ceos-covid

To read more about gender diversity at U.S. companies: https://www.capitaliq.spglobal.com/web/client?auth=inherit#news/article?id=65743394&KeyProductLinkType=6

To subscribe to our new newsletter, The Social Equity & Impact Review: https://spgi-mkto.spglobal.com/Subscribe-The-Social-Equity--Impact-Review.html

We'd love to hear from you. To give us feedback on this episode or share ideas for future episodes, please contact hosts Lindsey Hall ([email protected]) and Esther Whieldon ([email protected]).

Photo credit: Getty Images

Previous Episode

How to keep pace with the fast-changing landscape for ESG regulation, standards

If you listened to our bonus episode of the ESG Insider podcast last week, you know we were on the ground attending GreenBiz, one of the largest sustainability conferences in the U.S. that brought together about 1,300 sustainability professionals.

A big theme we heard at the event is that sustainability is accelerating rapidly — and that change is especially pronounced in the evolving landscape for standard-setting bodies and disclosure regulations.

At the conference, we sat down with one of those standard setters to discuss the big developments afoot: Katie Schmitz Eulitt, Director of Investor Relationships at the Value Reporting Foundation, formerly the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, or SASB.

"There's excitement about the harmonization that is happening in this space and maybe a little frustration about, 'well, why can't we just get it done now — why do we have to wait?'" Katie says. "But I think we've come so far so fast that some of us are kind of pinching ourselves."

We also talk with Kristen Sullivan, who is Sustainability and ESG Services Leader at Deloitte. Kristen moderated a panel at the conference titled "The SEC Homes in on ESG," and in the episode she tells us what to expect in the near term from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission when it comes to climate and human capital management disclosure rules. "It's a matter of when, not if, the regulators are really putting that definition around disclosure expectations," Kristen tells us.

And to hear what all these changes look like in practice for companies, we sat down with Jaclyn Allen, Director of Sustainability at fashion company Guess. "The investor community is really concerned about climate, and they want to know that the company that they're investing in has a long-term view for the business as a whole," she says.

S&P Global Sustainable1 was a sponsor of the GreenBiz conference. Listen to the bonus episode, featuring an interview with GreenBiz Group Chariman and Co-Founder Joel Makower: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bonus-episode-a-sneak-peek-at-greenbiz-one-of/id1475521006?i=1000551417128

We'd love to hear from you. To give us feedback on this episode or share ideas for future episodes, please contact hosts Lindsey Hall ([email protected]) and Esther Whieldon ([email protected]).

Photo credit: Getty Images

Next Episode

IPCC climate report warns: Transformational change is no longer optional

Companies have two options going forward: transform or be transformed, according to a Feb. 28, 2022, report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.

Companies can either make transformational changes now that will help them be resilient to the physical impacts of climate change in the future, or they can continue to be reactive and wait until climate change forces them to transform at an even greater cost, the IPCC finds.

In this episode of ESG Insider, we talk with one of the lead authors of the IPCC report, Dr. Edward Carr, who is also Director of the International Development, Community and Environment Department at Clark University. He was a lead author of the chapter in the IPCC report about climate resilient development pathways, which outlines the role companies and investors can play in adaptation.

The good news, according to Ed, is that companies are well-placed to develop longer-term adaptation plans and find new opportunities for transformation. At the same time, companies cannot do it alone. Governments, the private sector and the public must all work together to adapt to climate change and lower emissions.

Listen to our episode on the IPCC's August 2021 Group I report on the scientific basis for climate change here: https://soundcloud.com/esginsider/in-fighting-climate-change

We'd love to hear from you. To give us feedback on this episode or share ideas for future episodes, please contact hosts Lindsey Hall ([email protected]) and Esther Whieldon ([email protected]).

Photo credit: Getty Images