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Government must introduce quotas to help women get onto boards, says TUC

Responding to figures published today (Wednesday) by the Cranfield School of Management - which show that progress on appointing more women to company boards has stalled - the TUC has called on ministers to introduce compulsory quotas.

TUC General Secretary Frances O'Grady said: 'While we welcome recent cross-party efforts to alter boardroom culture, this has not led to meaningful change. These figures make for depressing reading.

'The only way we will end the old boys' network is if the government introduces compulsory quotas for the composition of boards, as recommended by the European Commission. Without this, female board members will continue to be a rarity.

'We will use our new share owner group, which has over £1bn of pension assets, to challenge poor corporate governance and call for greater diversity on boards.'


NOTES TO EDITORS:
- Last month the TUC and its two largest affiliated unions, Unite and UNISON launched Trade Union Share Owners - a new group which aims to put union values at the heart of the world of corporate governance, with a new approach to the way in which their investments are voted on at company AGMs.

- From now on at any AGM of a FTSE350 company where either the TUC staff pension fund or those of its two biggest unions hold shares, the group will work with shareholder advisory group PIRC to ensure that their funds take a common voting position in accordance with a new set of policy guidelines drawn up by the TUC http://www.tuc.org.uk/economy/tuc-22042-f0.cfm

- All TUC press releases can be found at www.tuc.org.uk

- Follow the TUC on Twitter: @tucnews


Contacts:
Media enquiries:
Liz Chinchen T: 020 7467 1248 M: 07778 158175 E:
media@tuc.org.uk
Alex Rossiter T: 020 7467 1337 M: 07887 572130 E: arossiter@tuc.org.uk

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