The numbers of female trustees on the boards of the top 100 charities has grown by 10 per cent since 2011, so that women now occupy 34 per cent of board positions.
And the number of Charity 100 Index boards with no women on them has halved from six in 2011 to just three this year – Islamic Relief Worldwide, Leverhulme Trust and Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance.
However, female representation among chairs of the largest charities remains stubbornly low. Just 14 of the Charity 100 Index chairs are women – a slight improvement on 12 in 2011, but a fall from 17 last year.
Nonetheless, the charity sector still outperforms the private sector on both board representation and chairs. Just 17.3 per cent of board seats at FTSE 100 companies are held by women and just one of the chairs is female.
A few charities told civilsociety.co.uk that they had deliberately set out to increase the proportion of women on their boards, though all stressed that this was secondary to getting the right skill-sets. General Sir Kevin O’Donoghue, chair of SSAFA, said: “The increase of women on our board has been by design, not by accident.
“But I would not accept someone who is not of the right quality simply because they met some sort of quota.”
The government has now passed a law requiring all listed companies to declare the numbers of women on their boards, in senior management positions and in the company as a whole, from 1 October.
