“Women don’t want the hassle,” and “Women don’t fit in,” are just two of the appalling reasons given by a range of FTSE 350 chairs and chief executives as to why they would not appoint a female executive to the board.

These shameful gems were heard by the team conducting the government-backed Hampton-Alexander Review, FTSE Women Leaders, which seeks to assess the gender imbalance in business. The review captures 23,000 leaders in 350 of Britain’s largest companies and extends down two leadership layers below the board.

According to the report, less than a third of FTSE 350 leadership roles went to women, with females accounting for 25.1% of combined executive committee and direct reports. However, the number of all-male FTSE 350 company boards fell from 152 in 2011 to 10 in 2017.

Some Companies Further Ahead

The report notes that: “The gap between companies working hard to shift gender balance at the top and those doing very little has never been more obvious. The sector has a marginal impact with star performers and laggards in every sector. It is the ambition of the leader that matters most.”

Companies such as Ascential PLC, DFS Furniture, Grainger PLC and Halfords lead the way in terms of their percentage of female board members. While as of November 2016, Centamin PLC, Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC, Metro Bank PLC and Clarkson PLC had all-male boards.

More Work Needs to Be Done

While this is progress, Sir Philip Hampton, the senior City figure who is leading the review, said companies still had a long way to go if they were to meet the 2020 targets: “We used to hear these excuses regularly a few years ago, thankfully much less so now.

“However, leaders expressing warm words of support but actually doing very little to appoint women into top jobs – or quietly blocking progress – are really not much better.”

Business Minister Andrew Griffiths said scathingly of the excuses:

“It’s shocking that some businesses think these pitiful and patronising excuses are acceptable reasons to keep women from the top jobs. The review asserts that bridging the UK gender gap has the potential to create an extra £150 billion on top of business-as-usual GDP forecasts in 2025, gaining between 5% – 8% in GDP. Our most successful companies are those that champion diversity.”

The top 10 excuses for not appointing women were:

• “I don’t think women fit comfortably into the board environment”
• “There aren’t that many women with the right credentials and depth of experience to sit on the board – the issues covered are extremely complex”
• “Most women don’t want the hassle or pressure of sitting on a board”
• “Shareholders just aren’t interested in the make-up of the board, so why should we be?”
• “My other board colleagues wouldn’t want to appoint a woman on our board”
• “All the ‘good’ women have already been snapped up”
• “We have one woman already on the board, so we are done – it is someone else’s turn”
• “There aren’t any vacancies at the moment – if there were I would think about appointing a woman”
• “We need to build the pipeline from the bottom – there just aren’t enough senior women in this sector”
• “I can’t just appoint a woman because I want to”

Amanda Mackenzie, chief executive of Business in the Community, said: “As you read this list of excuses you might think it’s 1918, not 2018. It reads like a script from a comedy parody but it’s true. Surely we can now tackle this once and for all. Maybe those that give credence to these excuses are the ones that are not up to sitting on boards and should move over: we are in the 21st century after all.

“However, we have plenty of reasons to be optimistic; the combination of gender pay gap reporting and the increased focus on equality and diversity in general by responsible businesses means there are more women on boards than ever before. While we still have a long way to go, with the collaboration between government, employers and their employees (both men and women), we could see true equality in our lifetime.”