Business women in the UK are still being constrained by a glass ceiling between them and senior management positions, a Grant Thornton survey has claimed.
Just 64 per cent of mid-sized UK businesses have female staff at the senior management level, and the rate of female promotion slowed to just two per cent between 2004/07.
This compares poorly to even developing nations, with 97 per cent of businesses in the Philippines having women in senior posts, and 91 per cent in China.
"This clearly challenges the commonly held perception that East Asia is less developed than the UK both economically and in the area of gender equality," said the report.
"The introduction of quotas would be one possible (although not popular) way to overcome this and has proved successful in Scandinavian countries."
The accountancy firm found similar levels of poor female-employment across western European businesses.
