Question

To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, what steps her Department is taking to work with FTSE 350 companies to increase the number of women chairs.

We are supporting the Hampton-Alexander Review, which has a target for all stakeholders to work together to increase the number of female Chairs, Senior Independent Directors and Executive Directors on FTSE 350 boards. This supports the overall target for women to hold 33% of senior leadership and board positions in the FTSE 350 by 2020.

This month, the Review wrote a joint letter with the Investment Association to the 72 FTSE 350 companies with one female or less on their Board, asking them to set out how they intend to make progress.

Women hold a higher percentage of senior leadership positions than ever before: 27.6% of directorships in the FTSE 350 and 30.9% of directorships in the FTSE 100. The number of female Chairs in the FTSE 350 has nearly doubled since 2015.