Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi's job is never done. Chairwoman and CEO at PepsiCo, one of the giants in the food and beverages industry, she's also director at the Consumer Goods Forum, a global industry network and board member at the World Economic Forum, an international organisation. During her career, Ms Nooyi has held a range of posts from corporate strategy to serving as Chief Financial Officer. She's also sat in many a boardroom, including those of Motorola Solutions and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Together with Marjorie Scardino, the first woman CEO of a FTSE 100 company, they are a testament to what women might achieve in the corporate world. Cases like these, however, are few and far between.

Across OECD countries, nearly three-fifths of graduates are female. But research shows that at every step on the corporate ladder, the proportion of female workers drops. The impact of a more female leadership team has been tough to measure – correlation, alas, never equals causation – and so the argument for more female leaders is hard to make using terms palatable to companies such as profit, revenue growth and return on investment.

To remedy the gender imbalance the European Commission (EC) has been pushing for a mandatory quota on the number of women directors sitting on companies' boards. It's been stopped in its tracks, however, at least for now. Businesses are wary of regulatory meddling in their talent management and want to improve gender balance on their own terms. 

A quick look at progress made so far doesn’t paint a favourable picture of companies' efforts to balance gender inequality. As part of a new report published by Ernst & Young, the EIU examined the boards of over 300 of the largest companies in the world. Comparing board composition today to a decade ago, we can see some improvement, but progress is decidedly slow.

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Will it be another ten years before we have a 60-40 gender split in boardrooms? Quotas are one way of getting there faster, but they have their own problems: will male members of a board respect a female colleague who might have been promoted based solely on her gender?

At the recent 30% Club gathering in London – a group promoting female board representation without quotas – Vince Cable, the UK's business secretary, said he would personally tell the chief executives of the eight FTSE 100 companies that still have all-male boards to "up their game". Gentle pressure from above might get the ball rolling faster. And as more and more large and successful companies take steps in the right direction, others might just follow.