By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

UK companies aren’t moving fast enough to hire female board directors, revealed a new report released yesterday by the Cranfield School of Management. Professor Susan Vinnicombe, co-author of the report said, “Our review reveals that the number of women in board positions is beginning to creep up albeit quite slowly.”

Six months ago Lord Davies of Abersoch presented an independent report discussing the state of gender diversity in the UK’s top companies. The review suggested that firms were not doing enough to attract and retain women in top positions.

As a solution, Davies called for British companies to set targets for the percentage of women they aim to have on their boards, and recommended that FTSE 100 companies set a 25% target for women on boards by 2015.

The new review by the Cranfield School of Management showed that the percentage of women on boards has grown from 12.5% to 14.2% in 2011. And, the Financial Times notes, “Since the Davies report, women have accounted for 22.5 per cent of appointments – below the 33 per cent he recommended.”

The Cranfield review revealed that only 33 companies on the FTSE 100 are aiming for the 25% target recommend by Davies. According to the Telegraph, in fact, a full two-thirds of blue chip companies have yet to even set out their plans for getting more women on boards. Dr. Ruth Sealy, co-author of the Cranfield report, commented:

“The results from our report suggest the recommendations in Lord Davies’s review have had beneficial effects in terms of reinforcing good practice, but they also demonstrate an institutional inertia, whereby companies persist in their existing approach – or lack thereof – to gender diversity on boards. It is so important that our top companies set the standard for achieving better representation on their boards.”

In his initial report, Davies suggested that if companies fail to set targets to increase the representation of women in the boardroom, the government should enact quotas similar to those in Norway, France, and Spain. Prime Minister David Cameron is reported to be writing letters to the members of the FTSE 350 who have not set targets to encourage them to do so – before government intervention is necessary.

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

What’s one difference between a manager and a leader? Leadership is about looking outward at your organization, rather than only back at your team. It’s the same thing with delegation – to be really great at it, you need to do it with purpose, looking back at your team, and looking broadly at the organization. It’s not just about doling out work, but it means really thinking about why you’re delegating a task, how it can help you and your team grow, and how it can better position you to be more effective for your organization.

“Sometimes leaders hesitate when it comes to asking for help,” began Mary Edwards, Managing Director and Senior Executive, Health and Public Service at Accenture. “But I think it’s important for every leader to have effective delegation skills.”

For Edwards, delegation is not just a way to get through the day, it’s a way to help her team build skills and make sure she has time and energy left to do the work that can help her company grow. Here are her top four tips on how to become a great delegator – and a great leader.

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By Cleo Thompson (London), founder of The Gender Blog

As the debate around the use of quotas to increase the number of women on UK boards continues, so does the need to look at what’s working around the world to shift the gender diversity needle.

Earlier this month, the European Professional Women’s Network invited Claire Braund, co-founder of Women on Boards, the leading advocate for improving gender diversity on Australian boards, to a London event to speak about the Australian story and outline Australia’s track record of success around women gaining access to board positions in business, government, community and not-for-profit sectors.

Braund co-founded Women on Boards – which now has 11,500 members – in 2006 and she is currently in the UK as part of her Churchill Fellowship award, a bursary with which she is examining the impact of boardroom quotas in Norway and the progress of the public policy debate in the UK and France.

Hosted by investment services company Mercer, the EPWN audience was welcomed by Mercer’s UK CEO Alan Whalley, who also serves as the executive sponsor of the Vine, the company’s network for women. Braund outlined the introduction and impact of the new Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) regulations, announced in December 2009 and described by Australian federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick as “the first structural intervention we’ve had”. The plan will force companies to publish a gender breakdown of directors and senior employees and to set both objectives and targets for gender diversity.

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By Savita Iyer-Ahrestani (New York City)

One could say it’s laughable that, in the year 2011, women are celebrating Christine Lagarde’s appointment as the first female head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). But, says Subha Barry, Senior Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer at Freddie Mac, “every ceiling that we break must be celebrated,” and Lagarde’s appointment is yet another major breakthrough for professional women.

Her progress at the traditionally male-dominated institution that is the IMF “is going to be carefully watched by everyone and will make it so much easier for other women,” Barry says.

Barry, like most women of her ilk, holds Lagarde in high esteem. She has no doubt that Lagarde will be highly successful in her new role, and that she will take the Fund – an institution that scores of people the world over have, for the better part of the past couple of decades, loved to hate – forward on a new course. Her presence at its helm will help a great deal in restoring the Fund’s credibility – even if that effort had, despite his unsavory exit, already been undertaken to a great degree by former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

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