Only one top boss in 50 is female

THE Fire Brigade has launched an advertising campaign to recruit them. Trains are now driven by them. Even the RAF's elite flying display team, the Red Arrows, has let them in. Yet the boardrooms of many top British companies remain no-go areas for women.

For the third year running, the number of women directors in FTSE 100 companies has fallen. Only 57 of the top 100 corporations now has a woman on the board in either an executive or non-executive role. That is down from 58 this time last year and 64 in 1999.

Four years after Marjorie Scardino shattered the glass ceiling to become the UK's first woman chief executive when she took the helm at media group Pearson, fewer than one in 50 executive directors in FTSE companies is female. The number of women executive directors has dropped from 13 to 10 in the past year, according to the FTSE Female index.

Solicitor General Harriet Harman, who is spearheading the effort to improve the representation of women at the top of British business, said: 'We lag far behind the US where business recognises the value of diversity and reflects on its boards the importance of women employees and women consumers. Our target is that within the next two years there should be no all-male boards in the FTSE 100. The boards of British business should be a meritocracy - not just 'chairman's chums'.'

There is some evidence that companies who rely heavily on women as customers are beginning to reflect this at the top of their businesses. Marks & Spencer, for example, has the highest proportion of women in the boardroom. Alison Reed, finance director, and Laurel Powers-Freeling, director of financial services, are executives, and Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, is a non-executive. Together they make up a quarter of the retailer's boardroom.

Insurance group Legal & General would have headed the table as the first UK company with four women on its board, had it not been for this month's departure of Elizabeth Wall. Instead it drops to third place as the remaining women - Kate Avery, Frances Heaton and Beverley Hodson - account for only 23% of the 13-strong board.

The research, carried out by the Cranfield Centre for Developing Business Women Leaders, shows that companies with a woman already on the board are more likely to appoint another. But Cranfield does not appear to support the idea that most women who make it into the boardroom are 'token appointments'.

Find details of the Index of Female Directors in FTSE 100 Company boards on the Financial Mail Women's Forum website - Click here .