Gender balance in FTSE350 Retail today

In his State of the Union address earlier this week, US President Donald Trump said “We’ve ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government. And indeed the private sector and our military. And our country will be woke no longer. We believe that whether you are a doctor, an accountant, a lawyer or an air traffic controller, you should be hired and promoted based on skill and competence, not race or gender.”

Regardless of what one thinks about the rights and wrongs of President Trump’s views on the matter, we thought it would be interesting to review the current state of gender equality in listed UK Retail. To do this, we looked through the latest Annual Reports for the 25 firms within the FTSE350 that are designated as being in Clothing Retail, Food Retail or General Retail. Granted, things will have changed a bit since publication of their latest Annual Reports (the CEO of Burberry was replaced, for example) never mind that the Financial Years differ across firms. Nonetheless, the data quickly started to give up some interesting secrets when reviewed in aggregate, some of which we now present below.

Figure 1 shows how progress has been made in at least one dimension of gender balance, using the gender composition of the Board of Directors of Marks & Spencer since the year 2000 as our example (this is not to pick on M&S in any way, just to be clear).

Figure 1

Despite the progress highlighted above, Figure 2 shows how the percentage of women filling roles in our biggest Retail PLCs still falls progressively today as the roles within companies become more senior, with just one female CEO among the 25 Retail PLCs whose latest Annual Reports we reviewed (Lyssa McGowan at Pets at Home). Not to fault Tesco PLC in any way specifically, but its gender profile is rather typical: while 52% of its staff are women, this falls to 30% of its Global Leaders, 25% of its Executive Committee, and none of its four top office holders (Chair, CEO, CFO, and Senior Independent Director).

Figure 2

In the UK since 2022, the Corporate Governance code asks listed firms to either comply with or explain why they aren’t complying with the following two guidelines with respect to gender composition:

1. At least 40% of Company Boards should be women;

2. At least one of the following four positions should be held by a woman: CEO, CFO, Board Chair, or Senior Independent Director.

On these two scores, the news appears encouraging (see Figure 3, where we name all the firms in our sample who meet the rules at least in terms of board composition).

Figure 3

While 7 of the 25 firms we reviewed failed to meet the 40% threshold in their latest Annual Reports, it’s also noteworthy that – taken as a whole – our sample of 25 firms does meet the 40% target, with 44% (103) of their 234 Board Members being women.

Likewise, seven firms (three of which failed the test in Figure 2) had no women holding any of their Top 4 corporate roles as of their latest Annual Report (see Figure 4).

Figure 4

With more than 40% of top Retail PLC board members being women, but only 4% and 24% respectively of CEOs and CFOs, we wondered what else we could find out about the responsibilities of the female board members whose details we had just bashed into our database. While we were at it, we also thought we would look through the ranks of Company Secretary for each firm, and also the gender (where specified) of the Designated non-Executive Director for Employee Relations (this is a more recent addition to the UK Corporate Governance Code). This data is presented in Figure 5 below.

Figure 5

So while women may only account for 4% of top UK Retail PLC CEOs, women do now hold the majority (where gender is specified or otherwise appears evident) of Company Secretary positions (most firms also denote this role as their General Counsel), Remunerations Committee Chairs, and designated Non-Executive Directors for Employee relations.

We finish for today by repeating Figure 1 but, this time (Figure 6), adding in the percentage of Board Directors held by women.

Figure 6

Overall, this data suggests to us that the current regulations are achieving at least some of what they set out to achieve, which is to say a more equitable balance of senior corporate positions being held by women. Whether or not that’s ‘right’ compared to the default “best person for the job” setting is a matter for debate, of course, although I think I know where US President Donald Trump stands on it, judging by his State of the Union address. But now that we’ve collated the data, we’re already munching away for further potential insights in and around this area – so watch this space for more in forthcoming posts.