The cry that there should be more women on the boards of public bodies is not a new one, but the announcement of a target – reported in the People Management news pages – is new. The government-backed Women’s National Commission wants to ensure that by 2011 women make up at least 40 per cent of the membership of public boards. If that sounds rather modest to you, as it does to me, given that women are half the population, the Commission notes that the percentage currently stands at 34 per cent.

Before I rushed into the bloggers’ trap of instant pontification repented at leisure, I checked what the percentage is for the public board which I chair – the board of Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College. We have 19 board places (including staff, students and the principal) and nine of them are held by women (47 per cent) rising to 10 when our new principal joins us: 53 per cent. I think we can claim a tick for that one.

Minorities? Seven out of 19 – though one is our departing interim principal, and 37 per cent in no way reflects the diversity of our students body, which must be at least 90 per cent non-white.

Disability? Hmm: nought out of 19, so far as I know. Let’s move on, shall we?

I’ve pondered these issues for some time, and wonder whether it’s the model of public boards we use in Britain which is wrong. People still use the shorthand “the great and the good” (though mostly now for national bodies, not local ones) and many boards still rely on the time-honoured assumption that suitably worthy people will make themselves available on a wholly voluntary basis. Others pay, with sums varying from a very modest daily allowance to the sort of fee which a private company would pay its non-executives. It’s a muddle.

Why, for example, does a board member of a university get nothing, but a board member of an NHS Trust get £6,000 a year? Where’s the logic in that?

And, back to what the Women’s National Commission is worried about, I wonder if reliance on volunteers narrows the pool of potential board members in ways which are no longer acceptable? It’s a complex business, and I doubt if there’s a simple correlation either way, but I’d like to see the question considered more. It may help to unlock more progress.