Key findings
Women in the UK intelligence Agencies today
• Women comprise 37% of the workforce of the three intelligence
Agencies and this figure has remained stable over the last few
years. This is considerably smaller than the figure of 53% for
the Civil Service as a whole.
• Women in the intelligence Agencies comprise disproportionately
more of the workforce at junior grades: they only represent
19% of Senior Civil Service (SCS) grades (on average). Again,
this figure has not changed over the last few years. MI5 has
a slightly greater ratio of women at SCS grades than SIS and
GCHQ, with just over a quarter of their senior posts filled by
women. Both MI5 and SIS have increased the proportion of
women at SCS grades over the last few years. The proportion
of women at SCS grades in GCHQ has remained largely stable,
although there was a slight reduction in 2014.
• Again, these figures compare poorly with the Civil Service as
a whole, where women account for approximately a third of
the SCS.
• However, the ratios of women on the Boards of the three
intelligence Agencies compare favourably with the Boards of the
FTSE100 companies. All the Agency Boards have at least 25%
women members and, in the case of GCHQ and SIS, 40% when
non-executive Board members are taken into consideration.
• Looking ahead to the future, 38% of new entrants to the
three intelligence Agencies are women. This figure does hide
some variations between the Agencies: while women make
up 44% of new entrants to SIS, they comprise only 29% of
new entrants to GCHQ. To put those figures into context, 50%
of new entrants to the Civil Service are women and the UK
workforce overall is 46% women.
14. We have identified three key areas on which our work is focused.
Each area is part of the normal career cycle:
• The first is the recruitment process – how women are
attracted to apply to join the intelligence Agencies in the first
place. A diverse field of applicants is a fundamental first step
to achieving a diverse workforce. For the Agencies this has
traditionally been a problem, particularly given the technical
nature of some of the work; fewer women have traditionally
worked in this field.
• Next, we focused on how the Agencies deal with maternityrelated issues, childcare and flexible working
arrangements. There is a real danger that if the Agencies
do not do more to help, and encourage, mothers to return to
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