Leading from the front

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Leading from the front
Published: December 10 2010 19:29 | Last updated: December 10 2010 19:29

FT writers and editors pick their most influential women of the past 10 years across the globe, from Nobel prize-winning scientists to political activists and technology tycoons.

POLITICS

Hillary Clinton
New York senator, presidential contender, secretary of state

Sonia Gandhi
President of the Indian National Congress Party and dynastic head

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
President of Liberia and first African female head of state

Angela Merkel
Chancellor of Germany and former chair of the G8

Aung San Suu Kyi
Burmese politician and former political prisoner

. . .
BUSINESS

Indra Nooyi
Chairman/chief executive of PepsiCo

Dame Anita Roddick (d)
Founder of The Body Shop, entrepreneur and ethical campaigner

Sherron Watkins
Former Enron vice-president turned whistleblower

Meg Whitman
Former chief executive of Ebay who blazed a trail for e-commerce

Hu Xiaolian
Deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China. Responsible for renminbi internationalisation

. . .
ART

Louise Bourgeois (d)
French-American artist and sculptor known for her spider structures

Marlene Dumas
South African artist who specialises in representations of the human body

Tracey Emin
Young British artist who makes art out of her personal history

Annette de la Renta
Vice-chairman, Metropolitan Museum, New York

Marian Goodman
New York gallerist bringing European art to Americans

. . .
SCIENCE

Elizabeth Blackburn
Won 2009 Nobel prize for work on ageing and cancer

Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Astrophysicist who discovered the first pulsar (rotating neutron star)

Dame Jane Goodall
Groundbreaking primatologist and chimpanzee champion

Susan Greenfield
Britain’s most controversial female scientist

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard
Nobel prize-winner for her work on embryonic development

. . .
SPORT

Yelena Isinbayeva
Russian pole-vaulter who won Olympic golds in 2004 and 2008

Paula Radcliffe
Long-distance runner who has won eight marathons

Annika Sörenstam
Holds more tournament titles than any other female golfer

Marta Vieira da Silva
Star football forward on Brazil’s national team

Serena Williams
Tennis champion with 27 Grand Slam wins and two Olympic golds

. . .
ENTERTAINMENT

Beyoncé
Moved from girl group to soloist, picking up 16 Grammys en route

Tina Fey
American actress, comic and Sarah Palin-impersonator

Jade Goody (d)
Icon of reality television

Angelina Jolie
One Oscar, three Golden Globes, massive Hollywood clout

Hannah Montana
Tween idol and model of media distribution

. . .
TECHNOLOGY

Carol Bartz
Outspoken Yahoo CEO who has sat on Intel and Cisco boards

Carly Fiorina
Head of Hewlett-Packard, 1999-2005

Marissa Mayer
The youngest member of Google’s executive committee

Sheryl Sandberg
Number two at Facebook is Zuckerberg’s closest business confidante

Padmasree Warrior
Chief technology officer and probable heir apparent at Cisco

. . .
BOOKS

Michiko Kakutani
Pulitzer prize-winning critic for The New York Times

Hilary Mantel
Queen of historical fiction. Winner of the 2009 Man Booker prize

Stephenie Meyer
Bestselling author of the Twilight vampire romance series

Gail Rebuck
Chairman and chief executive of the Random House Group

J. K. Rowling
Revolutionised children’s literature with Harry Potter

. . .
ZEITGEIST

Neda Agha-Soltan (d)
Iranian student killed in post-election protests in 2009

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Activist and author who criticised Islam in her 2006 memoir Infidel

Zaha Hadid
The world’s most successful female architect

Kate Middleton
Now the official royal bride-in-waiting after years of expectation

Sarah Palin
Darling of the US Tea Party, scourge of the left and 2012 contender

. . .
FASHION

Michelle Obama
First lady and fashion role model

Sarah Jessica Parker
Starred in Sex and the City – and changed the shoe industry

Phoebe Philo
Céline’s creative director defined the current drive for minimalism

Kate Moss
The ultimate mirror of fashion’s obsessions and model-as-brand

Anna Wintour
Editor of US Vogue. Arguably fashion’s most influential woman

Nominated by: Rosie Blau, Clive Cookson, James Crabtree, Jan Dalley, Vanessa Friedman, David Gelles, Andrew Hill, Simon Kuper, Joseph Menn, Chris Nuttall, Rebecca Rose, Alec Russell, Richard Waters and FT Weekend Magazine staff

Group Sets Goal to Get More Women on Boards

December 10, 2010
Group Sets Goal to Get More Women on Boards
By JULIA WERDIGIER

LONDON — When Helena Morrissey, chief executive of the money manager Newton, brought home an industry award for “Most Influential Woman in Asset Management” in October, her 5-year-old son asked whether there was a similar category for men. There was not.

“It showed we’re just not there yet when it comes to gender equality,” Mrs. Morrissey said.

That is why she set up an initiative last month, backed by the chairmen at the Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC, the retailer J Sainsbury and other companies, to elevate more women to management boards. The chairmen pledged to spread the word among senior executives about the need for more diversity on boards in Britain, many of which had never had a female director.

The goal is to raise the number of women on boards to about a third by 2015 — without resorting to the quotas that are now law in Norway and France and are being phased in by Spain.

At the 100 largest publicly traded companies in Britain, 12.5 percent of directors were women this year, compared with 12.2 percent last year and 12 percent the year before, according to a study by the Cranfield School of Management, which referred to “a situation of stagnation.” About one in four companies still have exclusively male boards, including the energy provider International Power and the retailer Associated British Foods.

“The initiative is a third way between doing nothing and introducing a quota,” Mrs. Morrissey said, conceding that the 30 percent goal was ambitious. “We want to get there with momentum instead of regulation.”

Like the British government, Mrs. Morrissey says she believes that introducing a quota should be a last resort, preferring to focus on merit. She also said a quota was undesirable because it could create the perception of discrimination.

Theresa M. May, the British home secretary, indicated in a speech last month that improving equality should be more up to the individual and less to regulation. She also suggested using the concept of “fairness” rather than “equality,” which she said had become a “dirty word” and was “seen by a lot of people as something that is available to others, and not to them.”

Mrs. Morrissey’s initiative, named the 30% Club, seems well timed. The financial crisis had exposed the shortcomings and weaknesses of management boards and made chairmen ponder whether a more diverse board might lead to better decision-making. A new British corporate governance code that took effect in June, partly to help avoid another banking crisis, says that boards should be “well balanced,” with gender diversity, to avoid “group think.”

Prime Minister David Cameron picked gender equality as a priority when he took office in May. As a first step, he commissioned a report on what the government could do to increase the number of women on boards, something he says he believes would increase productivity. The findings are to be published in February.

Ruth Sealy, deputy director of the International Center for Women Leaders at the Cranfield School of Management, also noticed “the momentum is gathering in Britain.”

“People have been talking about this for a long time, but the noise and the seniority of people who joined the discussion has increased,” Ms. Sealy said.

Richard Emerton, managing director at the recruitment advisory company Korn/Ferry International in London, said he had “a surprising number of requests from chairmen today for lists of and introductions to possible female candidates.”

“The debate is now moving from purely technical skills to finding people that can help improve the boardroom dynamic,” Mr. Emerton said.

But many companies continue to hold on to strict criteria for board candidates, limiting the number of female candidates, Mr. Emerton said. It is a custom in Britain, for example, to hire only nonexecutive directors who already have a board seat somewhere else. Edward Davey, minister for employment relations, said the government might have to persuade chairmen to be less specific.

Mrs. Morrissey dismissed the notion that there were not enough suitable female candidates. At Newton, an asset management firm owned by Bank of New York Mellon, 26 percent of the senior work force is women, partly because the firm has tried to draw a broader list of job candidates and women have been attracted to working at a place with a female chief executive. Part of Newton’s strategy is to check whether companies it wants to invest in have a well-balanced management board.

However, Mrs. Morrissey said that more needed to be done to deepen the pool of candidates. She mentioned the need for senior executives to mentor more female employees and special career advisers who help women before and after maternity leave.

Mrs. Morrissey recalled how women would drop by her desk and say, “I’m concerned, I want a child, but how do I balance it?”

“They look ahead in their career and don’t like what they see culturally,” she said. “But the more women there are, the more appealing the image will become.”

Mrs. Morrissey, 44, knows what she is talking about. When she is not in charge at Newton, with about $70 billion of assets under management, she is spending time with her children and husband, Richard, who quit his job as a journalist to take care of their six daughters and three sons.

Mrs. Morrissey, who studied philosophy at Cambridge University, was not always an ambitious campaigner for greater gender diversity. She joined Newton in 1994 after the founder, Stewart Newton, noticed her talent as a bond analyst for Schroders in New York. When Bank of New York Mellon bought Newton eight years later, the new organization decided to improve equality and Mrs. Morrissey was asked to set up a women’s group.

“I slightly resisted because I felt I didn’t need that focus,” she said. “But you need to be mindful that developments in this area go in fits and starts, and I look at my daughters and see that their expectations are pretty high.”

Mrs. Morrissey said the support of male executives for her initiative was crucial. “A lot of these initiatives are just women talking to women,” she said. In fact, her own idea for the 30% Club came after a women-only lunch at Goldman Sachs last year, and the club’s other leaders include senior female executives from Rothschild, Deutsche Bank, KPMG and others.

“It is essential that senior male executives spread the word about the importance of gender balance on boards,” Mrs. Morrissey said.

Win Bischoff, the chairman of Lloyds, said the word was spreading already. “Several people approached me since I joined the initiative saying they are interested and want to join as well,” Mr. Bischoff said.

The biggest challenge for the 30% Club, Mrs. Morrissey said, was to keep up the momentum.

“The time is right and the door is ajar,” she said. “The main danger with initiatives is that they tend to fizzle out.”

Kochhar optimistic about women in business

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WOMEN AT THE TOP from WORLD
Kochhar optimistic about women in business

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Dec 7 2010 Chanda Kochhar, managing director and chief executive of India's ICICI Bank, speaks to James Lamont, the FT's south Asia bureau chief, about the challenges she has faced in her career and the changing role of women in business in emerging markets (5m 14sec)