The UK is now one of the top five countries globally with the highest proportion of women on the boards of leading companies, according to the Egon Zehnder 2014 European Board Diversity Analysis.

The study also shows that banking is falling behind on gender diversity relative to other sectors.

This year the global executive search and leadership advisory firm has extended its bi-annual study to include over 500 companies from the US, Asia and rest of the world, giving a total of almost 1000 companies in over 40 countries. Europe is making great progress on diversity- though numbers of female executives on boards in UK and elsewhere remain stubbornly low. The study looks at all aspects of board diversity and is unusual in showing 10 year trends, and giving international/ country and sector rankings and comparisons.

Miranda Pode, head of Egon Zehnder in the UK said:

Miranda Pode

“Banking and financial services plays a disproportionately large role in gender diversity because so many board roles in larger companies fall in this sector. Unfortunately the banks are slipping behind other sectors on overall progress, driven by non-executive roles for women, but we are seeing real uptake in work to support more rising female executives.”

Further detail and full study findings – breakdown of country/ region/ sector etc pls see Appendix attached and on website: http://www.egonzehnder.com/EBDA-2014-map