ONLY 15 per cent of boardroom seats among Scotland’s listed trading companies are taken by women and there are only nine female executives working for these Scottish businesses.
The Scottish Government has condemned the figures as not acceptable, while STV chairman Baroness Ford has challenged boards to “look harder” for female candidates.
The statistics are revealed as a UK Government-backed review of gender inequality, chaired by GlaxoSmithKline’s Sir Philip Hampton, recommended that one-third of board positions should be occupied by women by 2020.
Currently, 26 per cent of boardroom seats among FTSE 100 companies are taken by women.
Baroness Ford - the only female chair of a Scottish listed business - said there was no reason that Scotland's record on gender diversity on boards should lag behind the FTSE “by some margin”.
She said: “There's a generation of well-qualified women from industry, commerce, government, the third sector and the professions, all capable of taking their place at the top table. So I would challenge any chairman who says he can't find a well-qualified woman by suggesting that he's not looking very hard. I'm happy to supply plenty of ideas.”
When GlaxoSmithKline in September named Emma Walmsley as its chief executive, it became the seventh FTSE 100 company to currently have a woman in the top job. In Scotland, there are none.
Furthermore, while there are no all-male boards in the FTSE 100, there are 13 Scottish businesses with no female presence around the boardroom, one third of the total.
When listed investment trusts are included the percentage of women rises to 18.4 per cent.
“It is not acceptable in 2016 for women to be excluded and under-represented in senior positions and decision making roles, and correcting this is one of our key aims,” said Scottish Government equalities secretary Angela Constance.
The Scottish Government is using new powers under the Scotland Act 2016 to bring forward legislation requiring 50/50 gender balance on the boards of public bodies in Scotland by 2020.
The UK sits at sixth in world ranking when it comes to diversity approach and the five countries ahead of it have diversity quotas. Yet in Scotland, where three of the party leaders in Holyrood are female, its business community is hugely under-represented by women.
In privately-held businesses, the picture is not as gloomy. FanDuel co-founder Lesley Eccles is among the most celebrated figures in Scotland’s burgeoning tech scene, while notable figures such as Audrey Baxter and Stagecoach’s Ann Gloag have amassed hugely successful business empires.
Their successes have not been replicated among listed businesses however, where the most diverse boards are that of Aggreko and SSE, which are 67 per cent male – though SSE does not have a female in an executive position.
RBS at 69 per cent and Stagecoach Group at 69.2 per cent follow, and are the only firms with more than a quarter of its seats taken by women.
The nine companies who currently have women in executive roles are Aggreko, Bowleven, Cairn Energy, Clydesdale Bank, Frontier IP, Iomart, RBS, SpaceandPeople, and Free Agent, which floated just last week.
Baroness Ford added: “People who chair public company boards need to make significantly more effort to bring real diversity – of experience and thought – to their businesses. Gender diversity is an important first step in this but we still have some way to go.
“Having a board comprised of people who all look similar and share the same background is likely to be pretty limiting, so to me, a mix of age, gender, culture and sector experience really enriches any board.”
She also said she had been working with a network of senior women in Scotland that who are “board ready” and urged recruitment firms to “to be much more energetic about finding and promoting new talent”.
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