UK official: All-women shortlists could be allowed in FTSE 100 companies

Story here. Excerpt:

'Business Secretary Vince Cable has backed recommendations which could see headhunters draft women-only shortlists for board-level posts, eliminating men entirely from the recruitment process.

All-women shortlists are not currently used in the private sector because they are fraught with legal difficulties and leave companies open to sex discrimination claims from men left out of the hiring process.

But Mr Cable has asked the UK’s equality body, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, to create guidance for headhunters on when and how women-only shortlists could be used in accordance with the law, free from the threat of litigation.

A source close to the Department for Business said the Government had not ruled out the possibility of changing the law to make all-women shortlists legal "without grey areas".
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Employment experts said that all-women shortlists are unlawful unless companies can demonstrate in a court of law that there are no men of equal merit for the job - which they point out would be largely impossible.

Meanwhile, a former FTSE 100 chairman, who preferred to remain nameless, said: “Is this really going to work anyway? At the end of the day, women won’t be appointed on merit – making their appointments tokenistic – and it actually sets women up for failure.'