Why are so few women in top local government jobs?
Published: Monday, September 12, 2011
The Equality and Human Rights Commission claims that there are 5,400 women "missing" from top jobs in the UK and the narrowing of the gender gap across business, politics and the media is "tortuously slow". Comparing today's figures with 2004 shows that progress has been poor; in many sectors the number of women securing top positions has slowed, or in some cases reversed.
There are deep-seated, structural explanations for the imbalance and these will take time to unpick, but now is the time to take radical, concerted action to tackle the problem head on.