Board diversity progress slows amid UK’s listed companies
With many companies responding to political pressure either side of the Atlantic, UK listed firms have seemingly placed their diversity ambitions on the backburner. The portion of new appointees to board positions being women fell to 50%, while the percentage of ethnically diverse appointees fell to just one-fifth.
Over the last decade in particular, diversity within the boardroom has become an increasingly important issue for businesses globally, both in terms of the business case, in terms of compliance, and, increasingly, in terms of wider social trends towards inclusive practices. Women in board roles can act as role models to encourage others to participate in the business world, and help firms to see where their weak points are in supporting more women into senior roles.
However, even in times where there was less overt political backlash relating to this, progress remained slow. In 2024, it was already predicted that some sectors of the UK economy saw a real danger of rowing back against their diversity efforts. One paper by corporate governance expert firm Indigo suggests that AIM listed companies in particular were struggling to keep pace with their competitors, when it comes to gender diversity in the boardroom. And while the number of boards with no female representation has dropped from 42% to 37% year-on-year, only one-in-six AIM board positions was held by a woman.
UK businesses are evidently a long way from being able to trumpet success about ‘parity’ in the boardroom, then. But new research from Heidrick & Struggles has found that many are already deprioritising the push to include women and ethnically diverse staff at their top table.
Companies are currently treading water, when it comes to appointing women to their board. Of the 305 new seats filled among FTSE350 companies in 2024, the researchers found 50% went to women – a decline of 6% from 2023, and 8% from 2022. This reverses a rapid incline from the years following the pandemic – with the portion in 2020 having stood at 51%.
On a similar note, the number of new appointees from ethnic backgrounds other than white has also fallen. In 2023, 23% of appointees came from Black, Asian, Arab, or Other groupings. But in 2024, that receded to 20%. While that is roughly in line with the portion of ethnic minorities within the UK population, it will not address the pre-existing inequalities in boardrooms, where only 13% are minority ethnic according to Spencer Stuart research.
Heidrick & Struggles concluded that, “the data shows FTSE 350 boards have largely maintained their commitments to gender equity and international depth of experience”. Meanwhile, Kit Bingham, head of the firm’s UK board practice, added, the 2025 Board Monitor “shows that UK boards are doing well where it counts, especially on gender balance and international outlook.”
However, according to the UK government, 51% of the UK’s population is made up of women. Likewise, then, only appointing 50% of new board members as women will not close the gap which sees that same Spencer Stuart study anticipate a 40:60 gender-divide. This means that in spite of the back-slapping among many UK companies about ‘parity’, they lag behind many peers when it comes to creating more inclusive boardrooms, rather than dreaded ‘old boys clubs’. To that end, only 26% of appointees in the UK were new to public boards, down from 36% in 2021, and behind the US on 34%, and France on 29%.
And those are on the fronts which companies have traditionally found it politically expedient to push for diversity in. LGBT+ representation is not part of the statistics released by Heidrick & Struggles, but with leading businesses now publicly restricting use of toilets and other facilities for transgender employees, it may seem unlikely that they have been pushing for equality in the boardroom on that front.
