Promotion of Women in Business
Debate between Martin Caton and Baroness Burt of Solihull(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Lorely Burt
I could not agree more.
I want to finish by referring again to Lord Davies. I have spoken about head-hunters and the requirement on listed companies to disclose annually the proportion of women on boards, how many are senior executives and how many are in the work force generally. That would shame a lot of companies into looking at the poor representation of women.
Lord Davies leaves formal quotas as a future possibility, but states that there is overwhelming opposition to them. Well, there would be. To require someone to comply would challenge the stereotypical grey men in grey suits. Will we need quotas? The Davies challenge is for the make-up of boards to include 25% of women within four years. I believe that we will probably need to move towards some form of quota system if boards do not comply with that. This is the last chance saloon for the grey men in grey suits.
Martin Caton (in the Chair)
I will now call Andrea Leadsom, but I advise the Chamber that five hon. Members wish to speak and I want to start the winding-up speeches by 10.40 am. We need more brevity and more speakers.