Women are still vastly underrepresented in positions of power, with such slow progress being made in many sectors that the UK is still “generations away” from achieving equality, according to research.

The 2020 Sex and Power Index from the Fawcett Society, a women’s rights and equality charity, charts how women remain missing in significant numbers from top jobs in politics, the law, civil service, trade unions, charities, professional bodies and sport bodies.

The index, published on Monday 13 January, also reveals an alarming lack of women of colour across the top jobs in all sectors...

The report detailed how many women are in top jobs in different sectors, including: ...

• Business: just over one in 20 chief executives of FTSE 100 companies are women. None are women of colour...

The Fawcett Society is calling on the government to improve gender pay gap reporting by reducing the threshold for doing so to 100-plus employees, requiring companies to publish action plans and introducing reporting on the gender pay gap by ethnicity.

It is also urging the introduction of time-limited quotas for use across public bodies and the boards of large corporate organisations and for the government to make flexible working the default...