This morning the BBC announced a watershed in the equalities agenda for Governance of the leading Companies on the London Stock Exchange. According to the Radio 4 Today Programme all of the top 100 companies on the FTSE now have a women on the board. This is a small but important victory. Every year since 1999 the Cranfield University School of Management has published a series of reports which measure the gender balance on the boards of these 100 companies. Growth has been gradual, but in the right direction. When the 2014 report was published (I couldn’t find a date for the report, but its introduction was signed by Maria Miller) 98 of the 100 Companies had at least one woman on their board. The two remaining companies at that time were Glencore Xstrata and Antofagasta. This morning there was little fanfare but if the BBC are correct their announcement would suggest these two laggards have appointed women to their boards or else they have dropped out of the index to be replaced by companies with women. Sadly the overall proportion of women is still very modest. In 2011 there were only 12.5% of women across these 100 boards and that had risen to 20.7% when this years report was published. The wider index of 250 companies had by comparison 7.8% in 2011 and 15.6% this year.

There have been many reports published over recent decades making the argument that the most effective corporate governance depends on having a social as well as gender mix on the board. This of course depends on a radical change to the nominations committees for these organisations. Appointing women and men from backgrounds that fall outside the experience of the current Directors remains elusive. The 2014 report suggests that the increase in women on these boards has been achieved by appointing people who have previously sat on the boards of smaller companies. The authors have recommended that nominations committees look more widely and consider recruiting candidates from the public and voluntary sector. That is of course asking for potentially one or two individuals to meet a wide range of demands. My own view is that the change of social and background skills and experience needs to be met by men on the board as well as the women. However todays news is a fantastic breakthrough. There is still a long way to go, but we need to hear this news shouted from the rooftops, not just a quick mention at 6am.

Of course now that we have a women on every FTSE board, perhaps we could expect to see a women Cabinet Minister in every Government Department? That would go some way to achieving David Camerons own promise regarding gender mix in the Cabinet! Sadly the loss of Maria Miller who signed this years report means that he is a step further away from achieving this promise than when this was published.