The appointment of Emma Walmsley as the new boss of Glaxosmithkline has been hailed as a watershed moment for women in the boardroom.
And rightly so. With just a measly six (seven after Walmsley’s promotion) female bosses in the FTSE 100, there is clearly still an embarrassing amount of work to be done to shatter the glass ceiling preventing most females reaching the upper echelons of business.
A 47-year-old mother of four, she will become the first female chief executive of Britain’s third-biggest company, an £80bn corporate giant with a global workforce of more than 100,000 – in short, the most powerful woman in British business.
