With controversy around DEI swirling, how gender-diverse are retail executive teams?

International Women’s Day is next Saturday, but the conversation this year feels very different. Apple chief executive Tim Cook recently conceded the firm may need to change its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes as the legal landscape changes, just the latest signal of progressive parts of corporate life fading away fast stateside. 

Bank of America, Citigroup and even Google are among the companies to abandon diversity hiring targets over the last month. This all comes off the back of US president Donald Trump targeting DEI efforts in a number of the executive orders he issued after coming into office.

It was interesting timing then this week when the FTSE Women Leaders Review released its latest report exploring the gender diversity of boards and leadership teams at the UK’s leading companies. A voluntary target was set in 2022 for 40% of company boards and leadership teams to be women by the end of this year. 

So, how is the UK doing? FTSE 350 companies are already hitting the former target, with women now making up 43.4% of boards. The figure drops to 30.5% among the top 50 largest private companies in the country.

Perhaps unexpectedly, when it comes to women in leadership roles – measuring the share of women that make up executive committees and their direct reports – that trend reverses, with private firms (36.8%) marginally outperforming FTSE 350 ones (35.3%). 

Isolate retailers and we can see that just half of the 30 major retailers* named in the report are hitting the women in leadership target. While nearly two thirds (63%) are already hitting the target of women on boards. Across all of these retailers, there are 106 female board members in total – equivalent to 42% of board members within the sector (more or less in line with the FTSE 350 figure). 

This is a significant improvement on where we were 10 years ago and, if that positive trajectory continues, hitting parity does not seem too far off. But here’s the bad news. 

Firstly, the women in leadership figure is arguably the more important measure and, much like other sectors, retail could do better.

Also, the progress made in this area is unclear. Around 14 retailers have a higher share of women in leadership than they did in 2023, including The Range-owner CDS, Dunelm and Dr. Martens; five have seen effectively no change (less than a percentage point) and 11 have seen a drop. The drops include brands that were way above the target like John Lewis, which retains, a women in leadership share of 56.4%, as well as ones that are considerably below it like Games Workshop 

As these teams are small, there is a notable amount of volatility in the year-to-year figures. The average size of a leadership team at a FTSE 350 company is 74, with 10 in an executive committee and 64 direct reports. As a result, one woman leaving could shift the score by more than a percentage point. 

Yet the real measure is arguably the number of women in the most key roles. This measures the share of companies that have women in at least one of the top roles of chair, senior independent director, chief executive and finance director. As things stand, 77% of the FTSE 350 and 60% of the top 50 private companies had women in one of these positions in 2024. 

The share of retailers that can say the same? 70%. 

Some are going a long way on this. The Co-operative Group was the only major company in 2024 to have a woman in every single one of these four roles. However, it probably would not surprise most industry observers to see that the sector is largely underperforming against the FTSE 350 average. 

There is definitely hope that the volume of talent before the top table could lead more women into some of these top jobs. Should the enthusiasm for scrapping DEI schemes extend to the UK, that likely will not help move the needle.