The British Department for Business announced that publicly listed companies will have to carry out mandatory gender audits and disclose how many men and women they employ since October 2013. The aim of this legal action is to reduce the gender imbalance in the workplace.
The obligation to conduct gender audits follows the report of the Government Agent Lord Davies from February 2011 which called the largest companies quoted on the stock exchange for voluntary participation of 25% of women on boards until 2015. The UK considers the so far development of the voluntary participation of more women in business leadership to be positive. While in 2010 women accounted for 12.5% of board members of the largest companies listed on the London Stock Exchange (FTSE 100) and 7.8% of board members of the FTSE 250 companies, today they account for 16.7% of the board positions (FTSE 100) and 10.9% of the board positions (FTSE 250). Since March this year, women accounted for 44% of newly appointed board directors in the FTSE 100 companies and 40% of newly appointed board directors in the FTSE 250 companies.
The UK is one of the countries refusing to support legally binding quotas for women in top management of European companies as it is more and more urged from Brussels. Similarly to the Czech Republic, Britain thinks that this problem should be solved at the level of individual states, not the whole EU. The new British employment minister Jo Swinson told the telegraph.co.uk that quotas "negatively affect business." According to her, female quaotas will only lead to recruiting less experienced and less quality employees for top positions. She wants to continue the trend of directing companies to recruit more women without legal obligation.
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