Female FTSE Board Report 2024: 25 years on - milestones and misses

This year we see continuing progress in the appointment of women to Non-Executive Directorships on FTSE 350 boards. The percentage of women in total on FTSE 100 boards now sits at 43.4% and on FTSE 250 boards is 42.4%, thus on average both sets of companies have met the target set by the Women Leaders Review.

In total, women hold 450 directorships across FTSE 100 boards. The percentage of female Non-Executive Directors (NEDs) stands at 49%, in comparison with the percentage of female Executive Directors (EDs) which is 20.3%. The latter is at an all time high and is explained by the increase of female Chief Finance Officers (CFOs) in an active market for new CFOs. Women hold 793 directorships across the FTSE 250 boards. The percentage of female NEDs is very similar to the FTSE 100 at 49.3%, thus there is now parity of men and women in NED roles across FTSE 350 companies. Following the target set by the Women Leaders Review of appointing at least one woman to one of the top four roles (CEO, CFO, Chair and SID), there has been a push to appoint women into the ‘softest’ of those roles, the SID role, where we now see gender parity across both FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 boards. The percentage of women in ED roles across FTSE 250 boards has slipped further since our last report to 11.8%. The gap between the percentage of women in ED roles and NED roles across FTSE 250 boards has grown over the past three years (30%, 33% and 37%). Companies seem to have taken their focus off the big prize of getting more women into the top executive leadership roles