Forget the glass ceiling – the real gender problem for Britain’s boardrooms is a lack of women ready to take on the role of director, according to Kathleen O’Donovan, one of the country’s most senior non-executives. Research by [Bird & Co Executive Board and Mentoring] a company co-founded by Ms O’Donovan…has found that businesses want to appoint women to their boards but cannot find enough experienced female candidates. “Time and again, we were told there are too few women in the pipeline – too few rising up career paths, too few gaining experience in running things, too few in the top executive roles,” says the report…This comes after Helen Alexander, president-nominee of the CBI employers’ group, told the Financial Times last week that boards composed entirely of white males indulged in narrow “groupthink” and were missing out on talent…Bird & Co Executive Board and Mentoring… aims to coach, mentor and train 24 female executives in the coming months – and 100 over four years – to try to make them “board-ready”.