Posted March 13, 2017 17:14:29

Photo: Tesco's board only has three women and all its members are white. (startupstockphotos.com)

The chairman of Britain's biggest retailer Tesco says he was joking when he told an audience of aspiring non-executive directors (NED) white men were "an endangered species" in UK boardrooms.

John Allan, who became Tesco chairman in 2015, told the Retail Week Live conference earlier this week women and people from an ethnic background were in an "extremely propitious period" when it came to getting top jobs in business.

Fewer large Australian companies are run by women than are run by men named John. Or Peter. Or David.

"For a thousand years, men have got most of these jobs, the pendulum has swung very significantly the other way now and will do for the foreseeable future, I think," British newspapers quoted Mr Allan as saying.

"If you are a white male, tough. You are an endangered species and you are going to have to work twice as hard."

Mr Allan later told The Guardian his comments, made the day after International Women's Day, were not meant to be taken at face value and had amused his mainly female audience.

"It was intended to be humorous, a bit hyperbolic," he said.

"Clearly, white men are not literally an endangered species.

"But I was actually wanting the make the reverse point, which is that it is a great time for women and people of ethnic minorities who want to get on in business."

Tesco board has three women, all are white

In a statement on Saturday, Mr Allan said he was a strong advocate of greater diversity and regretted if his remarks had given the opposite impression.

"The point I was seeking to make was that successful boards must be active in bringing together a diverse and representative set of people," he said.

"There is still much more to be done but now is a good time for women to put themselves forward for NED roles."

The proportion of female directors among FTSE 100 companies is 26 per cent, according to The Guardian, while only 10 per cent of executives at those same firms are women.

Mr Allan had told the conference Tesco had appointed an almost entirely new board in the last 18 months and three of the six new non-executive directors were women.

However, Tesco's board still only has three women and all its members are white.

According to the Cranfield School of Management's 2016 Female FTSE Index of the top 100 UK companies, Tesco ranked 33rd.

In Australia, the number of women in key leadership positions fell in 2017 — there are just nine female CEOs and 10 women chairing boards in the ASX 200.

"To be a captain of Australian business you are 40 per cent more likely to be named Peter or John than to be female," consultant Conrad Liveris, who gathered the data on Australia's largest 200 companies, said.

ABC/Reuters

Topics: women, feminism, men, community-and-society, business-economics-and-finance, united-kingdom