Women account for only one director in eight in the boardrooms of FTSE 100 companies, and if you had looked five years ago the ratio would have been the same.
The pace of change towards achieving a reasonable boardroom balance between men and women will be described tonight by Sir Roger Carr, the former chairman of Cadbury, as "glacial" when he gives the keynote speech at this year's ICSA Hermes Transparency in Governance Awards.
Actually, "glacial" paints too optimistic a picture. Not only is it hard to see any movement, but some female executives have been heard to complain that though they make it on to more selection short lists for non-executive positions it is becoming even harder for them to get executive posts.
This week saw the launch of the 30% Club, which is the latest City initiative to promote board diversity. But as with previous initiatives, the main tools are exhortation and example — and further push will come, in Carr's view, from greater disclosure.
But neither the men nor the women behind the 30% Club support the idea of quotas. They think it would be demeaning. Women have to be there on merit.
But why? It would be a naive man who suggested that every male around every boardroom table is there on merit, because some self- evidently are not.
Meanwhile, Carr says a board with a reasonable number of women is socially and intellectually enriched, more reflective of the markets the company serves, and becomes more effective through better-balanced judgments and decision-making.
This suggests that even when a woman is not as well-qualified as an alternative male candidate, she would add more value.
The Norwegians got fed up waiting for their glaciers to move, and introduced a law that required board composition to be first 25% then 40% female. It was a difficult transition because in the early stages there were not enough women around.
But they came forward pretty quickly — the dislocation did not last long. We should stop being precious about quotas, and put aside the wishful thinking that boards will respond to gentle prodding. If we don't we risk another generation of women being frustrated by glacial progress.
