Boardroom logic says we need gender quotas like we need a smoking ban

Outlook

Facebook's Chief Operating Officerand "Lean In" author Sheryl Sandberg has been lobbying for gender equality in technology for years. (Getty Images)

It’s customary in the City to break out in hives at the very thought of formal quotas for women on executive boards. “Patronising”, “tokenism” and “political correctness gone mad” are the usual responses when the idea is raised. Let the market decide.

While the Davies review trumpets its success in getting a quarter of boardroom posts occupied by women, scratch below the surface of executive as well as non-executive roles and you quickly see where the power really lies. The market has decided: stay male and pale.

In the FTSE 100, only three chairs and five chief executives are women. Those are precisely the same numbers as in 2011.

Despite the Davies “nudge” approach of naming and shaming miscreants, Softcat, Worldpay and Hastings have all felt it appropriate to float on the stock market in recent months with no female board members at all.

Quotas are the only way of making the gender balance in corporate life reflect the outside world it serves.

Set the bar low at first and implement change gradually to give companies time to train and mentor their best female executives... pretty soon, it would seem as normal as the pub smoking ban. That was another law once decried in advance as a grotesque infringement on free enterprise; in the event, it made life better.