Top girls and bottom lines (From Bournemouth Echo)

Top girls and bottom lines

9:00am Tuesday 16th March 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
•  

The government has recently called for some of Britain's largest companies to recruit more women on to their boards and thus achieve greater diversity.

As Director of the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (UKRC), I feel there is a significant need to highlight the importance of this call to action across the Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) sectors where women make up just nine per cent of total director-ships of FTSE 100 companies.

This is significantly less than the 12.5 per cent of females among non-SET directors.

There is a powerful business case for encouraging gender diversity at the highest levels of UK business.

Research highlights that where organisations have an influential female presence on the executive committee, and more than two women on the board, they out-perform their competitors in terms of return on equity, operating profit and even stock price growth.

With the current economic challenges, there is both the need and the opportunity for businesses to consider the kind of changes that can have a significant impact on competitive advantage – especially in the science, engineering and technology (SET) sectors, which are often fuelled by innovation.

Annette Williams, director, UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology