Has Linda Cook made headlines as a favourite to be the next chief executive of international oil company Shell because she's a woman?
Certainly Cook - who is already on Shell's executive committee as director of gas and power - is one of the few women at the top of the macho oil and gas industry. But like her female peers in the boardrooms of Britain's biggest companies, she is also still something of a novelty.
Women make up just 11 percent of total directorships in the FTSE 100 index of blue chip firms, according to the Female FTSE 2007 report from Cranfield School of Management.
But the trend is moving towards seeing more.
"It's the highest it's been," said Val Singh, visiting fellow at Cranfield. "It's looking at the moment as if there will be an increase in 2008," she said.
Progress is slow, partly because of low turnover of directors. However, women took a fifth of all new board appointments last year, according to the Cranfield study.
There is still some major catching up to do on pay as well.
Women working full-time earn, on average, 17 percent less an hour than men working full-time, according to data from Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission.
The average woman working full-time misses out on around 330,000 pounds over her lifetime.
Some of this is due to discrimination by employers - paying women less than men for the same work.
But it may also reflect subtle differences between men and women's attitudes towards pay and promotion.
GENDER
Although it is difficult to pin down hard facts, gender does make a difference.
"Men are more focused on status, power and influence," said Chris Park, managing director at executive coaching consultancy Talking Talent. "And a big part of how we measure status and power is how much money you are being paid."
"Women are far more relationship and values driven."
In the business world, the way women approach negotiating pay and promotion for themselves is seen as an important reason why they might fall behind male colleagues.
"This is a common phenomenon in organisations," said Elisabeth Kelan, at the Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business at the London Business School. "Women often don't ask for a promotion, they wait to be noticed."
There are also assumptions made about women in terms of their gender, which means they may be judged negatively for initiating a discussion about pay.
