Travel companies need more women at the top
Travel companies employ a greater percentage of women than many other businesses yet have some way to go to meet the Government’s ideal for the number of women in top positions.
Prime Minister David Cameron told a summit in Stockholm this week that it might be necessary to introduce quotas for British businesses unless they voluntarily appointed more female board directors.
By 2015, the Coalition government wants one in four directors of FTSE 100 companies to be women. It has not set a specific target for smaller businesses, but it is encouraging FTSE 350 companies to state how many women they will have on their boards within the next three years.
British Airways, whose parent IAG is listed in the FTSE 100 index, has three women on its board of 14, putting it within the government’s target.
However, TUI Travel, which was in the FTSE 100 index until last summer, has just one female board member, non-executive director Coline McConville, even though 25% of its top 250 senior directors are women and 42% of its managers are too.
The company, which currently has 14 male board directors, says it is planning to add two to three more women to the board to bring the female representation to 25% by 2015.
EasyJet, a FTSE 350 business, has only two women on its board of 10, including chief executive Carolyn McCall. The other is non-executive director Adele Anderson.
Thomas Cook, trading as a FTSE All-Share company after falling out of the FTSE 250 last December, this week appointed a second female non-executive director, Martine Verluyten, bringing it within the Government’s target for larger businesses. Verluyten will sit on the Thomas Cook board alongside Dawn Airey and five male directors.
By Linsey McNeill
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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