Jobs for the Girls: Why Board Quotas Do Women No Favours

Companies need more Welsh directors. And there should be more left-handers on boards. And tall people, or more redheads. If that sounds nonsense, why do we have regular calls for more women in boardrooms?

The latest lobby group is Woman on Board, launched by MWM Consulting's Anna Mann -- who, having been one of Britain's leading headhunters, either succeeded in placing prominent females in top positions or failed to lift the ratio above 15 per cent at FTSE-100 companies, depending on your outlook.

It should go without saying that there ought to be no barrier to women joining boards, other than ability and suitability -- and no barrier for left-handed tall, Welsh redheads either.

Board appointments should be a meritocracy, but if a bar on women is wrong, so is bending the rules to bring them aboard.

That means no quota system like that introduced by Norway last year forcing large companies to make 40 per cent of their directors female.

The danger of quotas, legally enforced or achieved by social pressure, is that boards appoint token women.

The UK's 15 per cent FTSE tally shows almost all the women are non-executive directors, most with no board level executive experience, some with no executive experience at all.

The old boys' network that sees male executives at one company become non-execs at another has been attacked, but an old girls' network is developing in which the same names from the list of great-and-good are recruited as professional non-execs.

Simply widening the pool to include other women without corporate experience is not the answer. The problem is the lack of female executives who have worked up the hierarchy.

Either there's a prejudice that means women don't get promoted or, for some reason -- and some cite children, families -- women are reluctant to climb the management ladder. That is the inequality that needs to be tackled.

Indeed, those who want to see more women in boardrooms must reconcile the dilemma of whether they bring something different to the table -- an argument for appointing them.

It does not help to claim women are equal to men then to argue they bring special characteristics, such as different thinking or a distinct mindset. That, frankly, is patronising.
Nor does it help to make claims such as there would have been no financial crisis if banks had been run by women.

Anyone other than the men who ran those institutions can make such claims. In fact, most failed banks had women directors: were they outvoted by testosterone-fuelled males?

The main reason for wanting more women on boards is that the current gene pool, whatever its gender, is too small.

Corporate governance rules require companies to have more non-execs than full-timers and limit their time in office.

Part of the existing pool is tainted by links to banks or other failed institutions; some good people (of both sexes) are unwilling to join boards in case one part-time directorship at the wrong company is a blot on their whole career.

So yes, business needs more women because it needs more people. But good women, and good people, who can add something to the company.