Why so few women?

Writing in The Times today, Patience Wheatcroft points out a startling fact about the business leaders who have found their way into the latest edition of Who's Who.

In many ways, the new names from business are a wonderfully assorted bunch. Some have taken many years to ascend the corporate ladder, others have built their own businesses and, with them, family fortunes. But what largely unites them is that they are men. Of more than eighty new entrants from the commercial world, only eight are women.