Female IT exec urges positive discrimination in British boardrooms

Amanda Jobbins, senior executive at networking giant Cisco, has come out in support of introducing quotas to favour the appointment of more women into the boardrooms of UK companies.

Jobbins' words were timed to coincide with the publication of Lord Davies' independent review into the Women on Boards report, published this morning.

Though the report stops short of imposing quotas, it recommends that UK-listed FTSE 100 companies should "aim" for a minimum of 25 per cent female board representation by 2015, and that they should publicly disclose the number of women sitting on their boards and working in their organisations as a whole.

It also urges companies to disclose "meaningful information" about their appointment processes in annual reports.

Jobbins was unavailable for comment, but her opinions, combined with the content of the Davies report, will cause consternation within IT companies, where women executives are perceived to be particularly poorly represented compared with other industries.

"Traditionally, many women in senior positions have opposed quotas on the grounds that we should achieve seniority on the basis of our own merits," she wrote in a prepared statement.

"While I wholly agree all roles should be appointed on merit, who is determining the definition of merit today? The male incumbents. Many studies show that hiring managers have a tendency to hire in their own likeness. We need quotas to accelerate the change."

European Commissioner Viviane Reding last year called for 30 per cent of executives in top European companies to be female by 2015, and 40 per cent by 2020.

IT and telecommunications companies currently in the FTSE 100 list that will now be obliged to comply with the recommendations in the Davies report include semiconductor manufacturer ARM, BT, business process outsourcing firm Capita Group, satellite communications firm Inmarsat, Vodafone, and software vendors Autonomy, Invensys and Sage.

Lord Davies' report also recommends that FTSE 350 companies should state the percentage of women they aim to have on their board by 2013 and 2015, bringing more UK-listed IT and communications firms into the frame, including  Cable & Wireless, Colt, Computacenter, Imagination Technologies, Logica, Micro Focus International, Misys, Spirent, TalkTalk and Telecity.

Jobbins is Cisco's European vice president of technology and corporate marketing. According to information published on its web site, Cisco employs 11 women executives out of a total of 66, equalling 17 per cent.

As it is not a FTSE-listed company it is unclear if Cisco would be in any way obligated to increase that ratio to fall in line with any future directives from either the UK government or the European Union. Jobbins says the company's UK board comprises 40 per cent females.

Opinion on all forms of positive discrimination, including quotas, remains inevitably divided.

Proponents argue that positive discrimination is needed to balance entrenched attitudes towards female executives in traditionally male boardrooms, with critics of the approach arguing it risks better-qualified candidates being overlooked or arbitrarily rejected because they are of the wrong sex.