A Hansard Society Democracy Forum to discuss how many women it takes to make a difference to politics, business and society.

Despite enormous gains made in recent decades, women continue to be woefully underrepresented in positions of power. This is a loss for everyone - women's priorities are overlooked and organisations miss out on the new perspectives and fresh insights that women can offer. A few 'first' women are making key decisions in high places but a few are not enough to have a significant impact. If we are to change what gets decided we need to change who makes the decisions.

Little has really changed since the Hansard Society's Women at the Top Commission looked at these issues in 1990. Twenty years on, only 19% of our Members of Parliament are women; we have few FTSE 100 female board members and newspaper editors; only one of the twelve Supreme Court Judges is a woman; in local government, the civil service, universities and many other sectors women continue to be woefully underrepresented at the highest echelons.

How many women will it take to make a difference? Is it the 30% tipping point advocated by women's leadership expert and former US presidential adviser Linda Tarr-Whelan in her new book, 'Women Lead The Way'? Or should we focus on true equality at 50/50 parity? Or is real change dependent on a confluence of lots of other political and economic factors that we need to focus on?

The panel of speakers will give their views and then there will be a full discussion including the audience and the panel. Email hans_admin@hansard.lse.ac.uk to register for this event

Chair: Matt Korris (Research Fellow, Parliament and Government Programme, Hansard Society)

Speakers: Linda Tarr-Whelan (Distinguished Senior Fellow of Demos USA, former Ambassador to the UN Commission on the Status of Women), Professor Sarah Childs (Professor of Politics and Gender). Further speakers to be announced.