The UK’s biggest property companies are struggling to improve gender diversity at senior levels, with women accounting for just 11% of FTSE 350 real estate company executive director positions.
According to new research by gender diversity business The Pipeline, this marks a marginal improvement since last year, when women accounted for 8% of these roles.
The number of women who are executive committee members has also slightly improved, up 3 percentage points since last year – from 15% to 18%.
However, the number of women who occupy profit and loss board member roles has dipped marginally this year, to 6% from 7% the year before.
The Pipeline’s Women Count 2019 report also conducted research across all other non-property FTSE 350 companies.
The report found that the number of female chief executives has dipped since two years ago, from 4.6% to 3.7% in 2019.
More than 85% of companies had no women executives on their main boards, and the report claimed that at the rate of progress made so far, it will take until 2090 for executive committees to reach a gender balance.
Lorna Fitzsimons, co-founder of The Pipeline, said: “Over the last four years Women Count has proven that the FTSE 350 is not a meritocracy.
“When over 90% of men hold all the major positions from chief executive, executive director and profit and loss roles, there is something seriously wrong. The top listed companies are systemically failing to utilise their equally, if not more, talented female colleagues.”
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