The actual report is more moderate.

• It argues more female representation at the board level would be desirable, but states that statutory representation isn’t desirable as a means of achieving this – more needs to be done throughout womens’ careers to provide them with equality of opportunity.
• It encourages firms to undertake voluntary pay audits.
• It is receptive to more flexibility around parental leave following the birth of a child – allowing families to decide themselves how they structure such leave, and who takes it.

These seem sensible. What is more concerning is the way the report is likely to be (mis)interpreted – as evidenced on 5Live this morning.

There is evidence to suggest women can materially impact the way boards take decisions – that decisions are likely to be more measured. However, this does not mean that simply having more women on a board will result in a firm’s performance improving. There must be something specific about certain types of female directors which leads to more positive firm performance – just like some men are good directors, and others bad.

So the report is right to highlight the cumulative effect of inequalities in pay and opportunity as a barrier to achieving better representation on boards – and it is here that political effort should be directed, not at legislating to fix outcomes.

The issue of “Womenomics” was one The Economist’s Schumpeter column addressed late last year, who made much the same point:

People who bang on about innate differences should remember that variation within subgroups in the population is usually bigger than the variation between subgroups. Even if it can be established that, on average, women have a higher “emotional-intelligence quotient” than men, that says little about any specific woman. Judging people as individuals rather than as representatives of groups is both morally right and good for business.