Quotas won't resolve the battle of the sexes

Article here. Excerpt:

'Too few recognise the social progress Britain has made in recent decades. The gender pay gap has halved since the Seventies; the percentage of women on boards has doubled in the last decade; and half the top posts in the civil service are filled by women.

But worryingly, this month, the deadline expires for British FTSE companies to sign up to a commitment to have 25 per cent women in the boardroom by 2015. If too few comply, then the veiled threat of mandatory gender quotas looms. Far from advancing the meritocratic tide, such quotas would be regressive and counter-productive.

Since Lord Davies's report on the gender balance in the boardroom was published six months ago, headway has been made – 30 per cent of appointments to boards this year were women. But there have also been numerous complaints that the target is tokenistic. Sir Robert Wilson, chairman of the BG Group, points out that a 25 per cent target would require 100 per cent female appointments at his company for the next three years.

Few would deny – indeed, research from McKinsey shows – that having a more diverse board makes companies more competitive. But the best way to encourage that is transparency over boardroom appointments, so the correlation between diversity and competitiveness can be scrutinised by shareholders and investors. Equality should bolster, not undermine, commercial competitiveness.'