Thirty years after the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act, the Equal Opportunities Commission wants new laws to close the gender gap. Its annual survey of women in senior management has found the number in toppositions is continuing to rise. But the EOC says parity with maleswill be decades away without further legislation.

Among the FTSE 100 companies, just 10.5 per cent of directors - non-executive and executive - are women. This is up from 8.6 per cent two years ago, an annual increase of 1 percentage point. At that pace, it would take 40 years to achieve gender equality on the boards of Britain's largest listed companies.