Britain’s economic recovery is being held back by a lack of women in the boardroom, David Cameron warned.
The Prime Minister said there was clear evidence that ending Britain’s male-dominated business culture would improve performance.
And he pledged to learn lessons from Nordic and Baltic countries as he joined eight of their leaders for a summit in the Swedish capital, Stockholm.
Securing promotion for women and encouraging female entrepreneurs was one of the two central themes of the Northern Future Forum in Stockholm this week.
The annual gathering, launched by the UK last year in London, brought together governments from the nine countries with experts to discuss shared issues.
This year, the leaders also discussed how to ensure workers can continue in employment until a later age amid fears over the rising cost of pensions.
Mr Cameron said: “The drive for more women in business is not simply about equal opportunity, it’s about effectiveness. It’s about quality, not just equality. That’s why one of the things we discussed in Sweden is what other countries are doing to help women become entrepreneurs and take up leading positions in business.
“Women now make up nearly half the workforce across Europe and the majority of university degrees. But they are still not sufficiently represented at the senior boardroom level.
“The evidence is that there is a positive link between women in leadership and business performance, so if we fail to unlock the potential of women in the labour market, we’re not only failing those individuals, we’re failing our whole economy.
“We’re already helping women to set up and grow their own business in the UK. But the Nordic and Baltic countries are leading the way in Europe, with female representation on boards far above the EU average.
“So I want to get ideas in Stockholm that we can take back to London to explore if they could help us get more women into British boardrooms, boosting profits and contributing to the economic growth we all urgently need.”
At present, just 15 per cent of FTSE 100 directors are women.
A government-commissioned report last year said quotas should be imposed unless top firms acted to increase the number of women on their boards to at least one in four by 2015.
Former business minister Lord Davies also said firms should be forced to reveal the number of women shortlisted for each vacancy as part of the process to force change – a move being adopted by the British government.
In the last year, 27 per cent of board-level appointments at FTSE 100 companies have gone to female applicants, but one in 10 of Britain’s biggest firms still have all-male boards.
A book published by two Tory MPs – including Matthew Hancock, a close ally of Chancellor George Osborne – called for a 30 per cent target backed by state-imposed sanctions if progress was not made quickly.
Norway, one of the countries attending the Nordic-Baltic summit, has a 40 per cent minimum quota for all listed companies and Iceland sets the same proportion for publicly-owned institutions.