SNP will seek 50/50 gender split on private sector boards

NICOLA Sturgeon has revealed that she wants the power to force private firms to have a 50/50 split between men and women on their boards.

The First Minister used a key speech yesterday to announce plans to ‘embrace positive action’ to tackle gender inequality, arguing that women face ‘blatant discrimination’ in the workplace.

She said she will legislate in the coming months to ensure more gender balance on public sector boards and wants private companies to sign up to a voluntary pledge by 2020.

Asked if she would consider ‘forcing action’ on the private sector, she replied ‘yes’. But she conceded that Holyrood does not currently have the power to legally act.

Gender quotas have been criticised by prominent female business leaders, including lingerie tycoon Michelle Mone, who has argued that appointments should be solely on merit.

Speaking at an event on female leadership in her home town of Irvine, Ayrshire, organised by Aberdeen Asset Management, Miss Sturgeon also said:

She believes she can strike up a good working relationship with Theresa May because they have ‘similar personalities’ and are both ‘straight-talking’ – claiming that being women ‘did make a difference’;

One of her key political ambitions is for gender inequality to be eradicated by the time her ten-year-old niece Harriet Owens enters womanhood;

She wants inequalities to be tackled in sport, heaping praise on tennis superstar Serena Williams for being one of the world’s best athletes, not just one of the best ‘female’ athletes.

Miss Sturgeon introduced a gender-balanced Cabinet when she took over as First Minister in 2014, one of the first world leaders to do so.

Yesterday she told a mainly female audience: ‘We won’t have true gender equality until we achieve a critical mass of women in all sorts of different professions and walks of life. So while it’s fantastic to have a female First Minister, a female Prime Minister, a female Chancellor of Germany, hopefully… soon a female president of the United States, it’s not enough just to have women in those leadership positions.

‘More important is what these women then choose to do to support other women. One of the things we need to do, in some circumstances, is embrace positive action.

‘We often hear in response to that that everything should be based on merit and things generally should be based on merit.

‘But if it was the case that a meritocratic approach to dealing with gender inequality was the way to do it, it would have happened by now. It hasn’t.’

The First Minister was quizzed about ‘positive action’ by host and BBC journalist Sarah Smith, who asked her if she would ‘consider forcing action’ on private firms through quotas.

‘Yes. We don’t have the power to do that in parliament, but we are about to exercise that power when it comes to the public sector,’ Miss Sturgeon replied.

‘We are going to legislate for gender balance on public sector boards. These things are controversial, but sometimes if you want progress you’ve got to be prepared to do things that are controversial.’

Asked again about private sector quotas, she said: ‘We’d have to discuss this with the private sector, but it would be something I’d want to think very seriously about. In the absence of that power, we’ve established the 50/50 by 2020 voluntary programme.’

In 2014, a report found that only 36 per cent of members of public boards in Scotland were female, but there has been an increase since then.

A UK Government report on the issue decided against the use of quotas to improve gender equality in the private sector. It insisted that appointments should be made on the basis of business needs, skills and ability.

‘Need to embrace positive action’