It will take more than 40 years for women to be fairly represented on FTSE company boards, according to the latest figures.

Only 12 per cent of FTSE board directors are women, an increase of one percentage point since last year, according to new research by Cranfield School of Management. At the current rate of progress, there will not be equal numbers of men and women on company boards until 2050. At the moment a quarter of FTSE boards have no women on them at all.