Women on Top-UK plc's leaders-in-waiting

In the Impact Executives house journal 'In the Interim' we publish a survey on the Interim Management market every 6 months, in our last survey we reported that the proportion of female Interim Managers was increasing, in December 2005 it was standing at 13% compared against 9% in June 2003. 13% is typically a higher percentage than you would expect in an average Executive Search database. Whilst there are a number of reasons for this fact, one reason is that women do not experience the so called 'glass ceiling' in Interim Management.

Link to Impact Executives-house journal-Issue 15-survey:

http://www.impactexecutives.com/pdf/In-The-Interim15.pdf

Management Today published this week a list of '35 women Under 35' these are according to Management Today-the future leaders of UK plc? Every time Management Today publish this list they ask BoardEX, the corporate research company, to look at the number of company directors within that age bracket in the UK. Among a sample of 1,419 London Stock Exchange and AIM-listed companies, they found a total of 162 directors who were in their 'salad' days. Of these individuals, 142 were male (88%) and a mere 20 were female (12%). The proportions had not changed since last year. Management Today suggest that this could be the female 'marzipan layer' in practice. A full 30% of British managers are women but most of them have yet to rise higher than the stratum just below board, the male 'icing' on the cake. Interesting..your thoughts?