Women are still losing out in Britain's boardrooms

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2013/jan/13/letters-boardroom-power-gender-gap

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Increasing the number of women who sit on company boards as non-executive directors is undoubtedly a good thing ("Women are inching towards equality in the boardroom", Business), but when it comes to the question of who wields the power, the gender gap is enormous.

The two most powerful people in British companies are the chief executive and the chief finance officer. In our 350 biggest companies, only 30 women occupy one or other of those jobs, compared with 670 men. This means that men hold about 96% of the most powerful positions in British business.

An effective policy for equality should not just be concerned with salary levels and boardroom numbers. It should also address this massive imbalance of power.

John Edmonds

Mitcham, Surrey

I want to tell you a story

We were surprised to see a picture of a person reading aloud to a group ("In the grip of a tale", News) headlined as a story-telling session. Story-telling is a completely different skill. The teller maintains eye contact with the group and tells the tale from memory, adding their own embellishments and variations. This is the true oral tradition. Reading aloud, although requiring skill, is a completely different thing and relies on the written word.

David and Sandra Abrams

Fareham, Hants

The continental Conservative

Your editorial, correctly in my opinion, highlights how Britain's "political, social and economic fortunes are intertwined with the continent" and provides compelling examples of that linkage ("Britain must stay firmly within Europe", Comment).

One of the most effective tactics of Eurosceptics is to point to the role of the "unelected judges" at the European Court of Human Rights. Your argument would have been strengthened had you highlighted both the pivotal role that Britain and, more specifically, the high-ranking Conservative politician and (unelected, I might add) judge Sir David Maxwell Fyfe played in the establishment of the European Convention on Human Rights as well as the fact that it is an instrument of the Council of Europe and not the EU.

Neil Macehiter

Cambridge

The play's the thing

I was very pleased to see the approving reference in Philip French's review of the film Quartet (New Review) to the largely forgotten British playwright NC Hunter. It brought to mind not only Hunter's plays, which not infrequently still pop up in my mind, but myself as an impecunious schoolboy from a south London grammar school, queueing on Saturday mornings to buy a stool in the queue for the gallery and the evening performance. One of the great memories of my life is of the visit to London of the Comédie-Française in the late 40s or early 50s, and of the gallery of the St James's theatre. How the London theatre scene has changed since then.

K Thomas

Northolt

The perils for postgraduates

The problem of funding for postgraduate students ("Universities warn of crisis for postgraduates", News) is serious for all the reasons given, but you refer only to traditional full-time study. When I predicted the problem of increased undergraduate tuition fees deterring debt-laden graduates undertaking further study, some six years ago, I urged universities to plan to increase part-time, distance and work-based programmes. Those just waking up to the problem, now exacerbated by reduced funding, must bear much of the blame for lack of postgraduate opportunities now.

Dr Mike Goldstein

(former vice-chancellor, Coventry University) Streetly, West Midlands

Change lives outside prison

Reducing the numbers in our over-crowded prisons is better late than never. Many of our young offenders obtain their skills where they live in our no-hope, no-job housing estates. The Liverpool University report, Partnership with the People, provides substantial evidence that where residents become involved in changing their environment, sustainable success can be achieved. Is anyone interested before our probation service is partly destroyed?

Teddy Gold

Retired Liverpool community worker

London N3

Spare me Beyoncé's 'wisdom'

Here's hoping girls don't read the Observer. Two of the experts quoted in Tracy McVeigh's interesting and timely analysis of the value of female role models ("Aunties are a girl's best friend", News) explicitly cite celebrity culture as a factor in the mental health crisis affecting our teenage girls. And how do you accompany the article? With a photo of actresses in a TV drama and a slew of inane comments about aunthood from Lady Gaga, Beyoncé and others of their ilk. Priceless.

Laura Craig Gray

Oxford