Glencore and Antofagasta: the two remaining FTSE firms without women on boards

Dear Glencore and Antofagasta,

Come on you two. Your excuses for failing to appoint women to the boards of your companies are wearing thin.

Around about this time last year, Glencore, you committed publicly to hiring a female director just as soon as you merged with Xstrata. You told Lord Davies personally that you would put a woman on the board. Well, you've had a year and nothing's happened. So was that just a load of hot air then?

Both of you used to be able to hide among the other companies, all mining specialists, that failed to appoint women to top jobs. These were Xstrata (which doesn't exist anymore), Kazakhmys and Vedanta. The last two have dropped out of the FTSE. You are now alone, I'm afraid, among Britain's biggest 100 companies to have no women at all sitting at the top. And it's glaringly obvious.

I know it's hard. In mining especially, the hours are long. It can be dirty work. There's lots of travelling overseas. But don't patronise me by telling me women aren't capable. Cynthia Carroll, the former chief exec of Anglo American - as good as she is - is not the only woman out there who can work at a senior level in mining. There are plenty of talented women, you're just not looking in the right places.

I'm no recruiter, but anyone can see you have to start thinking differently about how and who you recruit. Several major headhunters have begun searching for 'talent' in different ways than before - they're looking in wider pools such as Government and public sector jobs, or different but relevant industries, such as construction, engineering, or manufacturing. They're also not so wedded to Profit and Loss experience. Plenty of decent women have earned their stripes in other areas of business, such as technology, sales or commercial.

I agree you shouldn't, ever, recruit women just for the sake of it. Women themselves don't want to be token appointments. We want to be there on merit. I agree it takes time to develop women up the ladder so they're ready for executive roles in the boardroom. (Speaking of which, have either of you at least introduced meaningful development programmes for women in your companies yet?)

You might, like many FTSE 100 companies, find a quicker fix is in seeking out a female non-exec director; someone who can challenge the board, offer alternative view points and experience from different industries/ backgrounds? Someone who, in essence, would help your business grow, and help the bottom line. It's no long-term solution; you would still need to focus on exec posts, but it's a start.

Nobody likes change. But it's about time you began to adapt or you risk being left behind in business. Why would women want to work for a firm that seemingly makes no effort to offer a valid career path? You've had years to sort this out (since Lord Davies first reported on the issue for the Government) and yet you've done nothing.

Perhaps you have forgotten, or need informing, why so many people bang on about putting more women on boards anyway. Your shareholders are global, so why should you care, right?

The evidence speaks for itself. IBM’s Kenexa High Performance Institute showed last year that organisations with a strong diversity and inclusion culture halve employee turnover, quadruple workforce innovation and double customer engagement. Research by McKinsey, one of the most respected consultancies around, showed that gender-balanced boards are linked to a better stock price. Fortune 500 companies with the highest representation of women board directors attained significantly higher financial performance, on average, than those with the lowest representation of women board directors, according to Catalyst’s most recent report, The Bottom Line: Corporate Performance and Women’s Representation on Boards. A report by Credit Suisse equally found that companies with at least some female board representation outperformed those with no women on the board in terms of share price performance.

So Glencore and Antofagasta, what are you waiting for?