Apprentice guru Margaret Mountford: Schools should help get women in boardrooms

The lawyer and businesswoman has said quotas for women board members do not work, and the key lies in classrooms
8 October 2013

The onus should be on schools, not businesses, to get more women into boardrooms, Lord Sugar’s former Apprentice aide has claimed.

Margaret Mountford, who joined the Amstrad board after a legal career, said: “I don’t know if companies need to do anything. We need to start at school, where the impression mustn’t be that science is for boys, humanities for girls.

“We need to make sure girls are as capable of and as competent at standing up on their hind legs and addressing the room as boys.”

Speaking to the Standard before chairing a debate organised by the private bank Coutts, part of taxpayer-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland, Ms Mountford dismissed the notion quotas should be introduced to increase diversity.

She said: “Nobody wants to be there because they are a woman, making up the numbers. They’ll ask: ‘Am I someone they wanted, or just the only one who came past the door when they were looking?’”

Ms Mountford, who worked for City law firm Herbert Smith, said her view had been “jaundiced by the Blair babes ... look at what you got when you just brought in all these women. Are they still around now? One or two maybe”.

She added: “It doesn’t work putting forward people just because of their sex.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in