Although it is the problems in the eurozone that continue to grab the headlines, there is another thorny issue facing many European companies: how many women they have on their corporate boards. It is a debate that has raged since long before the currency crisis, but 2012 has seen it move from the wish list to the priority list as European commissioner Viviane Reding threatened a quota system if corporates did not get their act together.

Commissioner Reding asked business schools to supply lists of women whom they considered suitable to sit on corporate boards. Meanwhile in the US, the Forté Foundation, a consortium that supports women in business, launched a similar scheme in June, asking 33 top business schools such as Harvard and MIT Sloan to supply lists of appropriately qualified women.

So far so good. But why are so few women making it to the top echelons of the corporate world? And can the blame somehow be placed at the door of business schools? As ever, much of the attention has focused on MBA programmes and how few women are on them. This is true: only about one-third of participants on full-time MBA programmes are women.