Women were appointed to a record proportion of top public sector scrutiny roles last year, according to new figures – but they remain under-represented at the very highest level of public boards.
The Commissioner for Public Appointments oversees the way appointments are made to the boards of public bodies, which include non-departmental organisations such as the Environment Agency, some NHS trusts, and industry regulators including Ofsted and Ofwat.
According to the latest statistics from the watchdog, women made up 45.4% of all appointments and reappointments to such roles last year, a rise of more than 10% since comparable figures were first collected in 2009-10.
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The CPA finds that women represented 877 of the 1,933 public appointments made in 2015-16 where the gender of the successful candidate was known. Last year, women made up 45.2% of the total 1,888 appointments.
However, women still lag behind men in being appointed to chair those public sector bodies, according to the figures.
Women represented just 28 of the 120 appointments or re-appointments to chair public boards in 2015-16, the watchdog found, while men took the lion's share with 92 appointments or reappointments.
At member level, women fared better, according to the data, with 849 female members and 964 male members appointed or reappointed during the course of the year.