What is a ‘Peter problem’? Jaw-dropping study of U.K. CEOs reveals more named Peter than women

Did you know that there are more CEOs named Peter leading top U.K. companies than female CEOs? This and other jaw-dropping findings come in a new report on U.K. corporate leadership among 350 companies on the FTSE index. The research was conduced by diversity and inclusion consultancy The Pipeline. Here are just a few insights:

Over two-thirds of the companies do not have any female executive committee members in so-called “rainmaker” roles, with profit-and-loss responsibility
15% have entirely male executive committees
Companies with executive committees that are more than 1/3rd female have net profit margins over 10x greater than companies with no women
Only 16% of CFOs are women

Though numbers of women on executive committees have improved by 2.7% since last year, a dive into the data shows that those improvements are not coming from top 100 companies, and frequently represent women going into non-P&L roles like human resources, marketing, and legal, often at companies that were already making headway toward gender balance.

The outlook is not good: “At the current rate, we will miss another generation of female talent before we have any hope of parity,” write the authors. They say this because having a woman at the top spurs more gender balance below: Women-led companies have executive committees that average one-third female, while those of male-led companies are one-fifth female.

Which brings us to the Peter problem: In the FTSE 100, there are five female CEOs, and six CEOs named Peter.

In the U.S., this is known as the John problem: There are more CEOs named John leading Fortune 500 firms than women CEOs. Roughly 3% of the population is named John. Over 50% of the population is female. Similar claims can usually be made in the U.S., by the way, for Roberts, Jameses, Williams, and Michaels.