Petra Wilton continues,: "We are concerned that redundancy appears to be adversely affecting women in more senior positions, particularly as there has been so much activity recently to try and improve female representation on the boards of UK companies.
"We know from reports such as that of Lord Davies into women in boardrooms that companies are more likely to grown and outperform their rivals if they have a higher proportion of women in senior positions. If organisations are making women at department head and director level redundant, rather than promoting them to their boards, they clearly won’t be in a position to reap these benefits.
"It is possible, however, that women are opting for voluntary redundancy over the corporate rat race - there is lots of anecdotal evidence showing that women keen on more flexible working arrangements are setting up their own businesses or leaving jobs to work on a freelance basis."
Phillippa Williamson, CMI Companion and Chief Executive of the Serious Fraud Office, comments: "Business leaders are missing a trick by not ensuring they pay their employees fairly. Companies that refuse to prove to talented women that they will be valued and rewarded as much as men won’t be able to recruit or retain the best employees and risk losing them to competitors.
"There is a clear business case for equal pay; evidence shows that companies where women are well represented at every organisational level from board level down perform better. Organisational performance will be improved by ensuring high quality managers and leaders are in place; gender shouldn’t come into it."
Sandra Pollock, National Chair of CMI’s Women in Management (WiM) network said: "There has been a lot of very welcome noise recently about getting more women into senior positions in UK organisations, for example Lord Davies’ report and the 30 Percent Club launching, so it’s disappointing to find that, at the current rate of increase it would be almost a century before men and women in executive jobs are paid equally.
"Why should a woman take on the responsibilities of a director-level position when the likelihood is still that she will be paid significantly less than the man sitting next to her at the boardroom table?
"The research launched today does, however, show that we have won our first battle - it is wonderful to see that the gender pay gap at junior executive level has closed and we hope this continues as this generation climb the ranks of management."