Seven women at the top? Water joke…

Guess what? There’s a new female CEO in town. Woohoo! South West Water has got a woman at the helm, which makes Susan Davy a member of the Magnificent Seven.

That is, seven women at the top of the country’s 100 biggest companies.

Not that blessed, are we? There as many men called Steve as women running FTSE100 businesses.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development made the Steve connection last year; the name changes – John, Dave, Peter… – but the point remains as trenchant.

Those women who do reach the pinnacle of corporate Britain still suffer from the gender pay gap, receiving significantly less for doing the same job; research from 2018 has shown that trailblazing female bosses are paid, on average, £300,000 less than their male counterparts.

The highest paid woman, Emma Walmsley, chief of pharmaceutical group GSK, is at number 21, with a £5.9million pay packet.

Such salaries are abstract telephone numbers to the rest of us. But the principle needs to be scrutinised. The average pay package for this handful of women was £4.3million; for the 94 men, the average was £4.6million.

This, although a widely circulated 2018 report by management consultants Mckinsey found that, between 2011 and 2015, the most gender-diverse quarter of companies were 20 per cent more likely to have above average financial performance than those that were predominantly pale, male and stale.

Susan Davy has succeeded. Is it her responsibility to promote more women?

Strictly speaking, it’s not. But nor is it in her job description to promote more men just for the sake of it.