How quotas can make leaders out of girls

One of the biggest challenges to women achieving boardroom success is overcoming the obstacle in their own minds. Quotas could help do that, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

It is International Women's Day today. So it should be no surprise to those who follow this kind of thing that the issue of whether we should force companies to up the number of women on their boards by enforcing quotas is back on the agenda again. I've been over at the BBC debating the matter on World at One with Virginia Bottomley. I suspect most people would have me down as being anti-quotas. I can see why.

First, there has been significant movement in the last year: around 25% of the new appointments to boards have been women. Second, there is a risk that quotas willmean that women who aren't quite up to the job will end up on boards, something that is no help to anyone. Third, that a small group of women who are up to the job and on the circuit will end up on too many boards: they'll become a kind of girls' club inside the old boys' club.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.