Female Supremacy Articles - Page 12

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Only in accountancy is the trend reversed, with women making up 40 per cent of those entering for Institute of Chartered Accountancy's qualifying exams in 2002-3 - down from 43 per cent three years before. And while there are no official statistics for City recruitment, Gilleard warned that negative publicity from a string of sex discrimination cases exposing the brutally macho culture of some banks was likely to deter female high fliers. 'It's the damage it does to [an employer's] reputation even if you are found not guilty. It does influence how people perceive the sector.'

The figures are bound to prompt questions over whether employers anxious to show they are enlightened are positively discriminating in favour of women. But with girls expected to put in another powerful performance in A-level and GCSE results to be released over the next fortnight, Gilleard said the current generation of young women deserved their success, and the failure of young men to match them needed to be tackled.

'Employers and the government need to take some kind of remedial action. The government's just waking up to the fact that we have got lost generations of lads in schools. If we did reach a position where 80 per cent of doctors and 80 per cent of lawyers were women, there would be a case for the same kind of concern as there used to be when things were the other way round.'