LONDON Only 10 per cent of boardroom directors in the top 100 British companies are women, the Equal Opportunities Commission says in its survey Sex and Power: Who Runs Britain?, published today.

The trend was confirmed by the 2006 Female FTSE report, which said that there are only 12 women executive directors at FTSE 100 companies against 20 a year ago, and that more than a quarter of boards have no women directors at all.

The commission’s survey found that business lagged behind equally competitive professions. A third of the Cabinet are women, and 36 per cent of all public appointments are held by women. Nineteen per cent of MPs and 20 per cent of local authority chief executives are women. Trade unions are more progressive than corporate Britain; almost a quarter of general secretaries are women.

The commission said that thousands of women were being driven to set up on their own. More than a million women were self-employed, up 18 per cent in five years.

Jenny Watson, chairman of the commission, said that until flexible work for men and women became the norm, women would struggle to make it to the top.

Susan Anderson, director of human resources at the CBI, said: “When you look outside the FTSE 100 there are reasons to be cheerful. A quarter of all directors aged 18-29 are women. As these women move on and up, we should see more getting on to the boards of the big plcs.”

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