What do a fashion house (Burberry), an investment company (Alliance Trust) and a drinks multinational (Diageo) have in common? All three are London-based FTSE 100 companies that have female board members. But they're the exception rather the rule among large-cap companies in the U.K. The number of FTSE 100 companies with female executive directors has fallen to 15 from 16 in the past year and the number of boards with multiple women directors is now 37, compared with 39 in 2008, according to the latest annual research from Cranfield School of Management in Bradford, England. Cranfield's "2009 Female FTSE" report has also found that 113 women currently hold 131 FTSE 100 directorships compared with 834 men holding 947 directorships. What's more, the overall number of U.K. companies with women on boards has declined, leaving one in four companies having exclusively male boards.
But how do U.K. boards compare with their counterparts in other countries? For the first time since the research began in 1999, Cranfield turned to outside sources to find the answer, enlisting the help of the Center for Corporate Diversity, a research company in Oslo focusing on the Nordic region, and Spain's IE Business School. Why Spain and the Nordic countries? One reason is that, unlike the U.K., Spain and Norway passed laws in recent years requiring a quota of female executives as board members.
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