Aon Benfield CFO, Maggie Westdale

The chief financial officer of the world's largest reinsurance broker's take on female progression in the accountancy profession is an all too familiar one.

"When I got out of school 22 years ago, 50 percent of the starting accountants were women and today 50 percent of the starting accountants are still women, but you are not seeing them go from that entry-level role up to the C-suite," Maggie Westdale, CFO and chief operating officer of Aon Benfield, tells Financial Director.

Westdale's experience, though coming from a background in the US, chimes with Lord Davies' recent report on boardroom gender equality. Lord Davies recommends that the boards of a quarter of FTSE-350 companies should be made up of women by 2015, or businesses will run the risk of quotas being imposed on them. Women currently account for just 12.5 percent of FTSE-100 directors; the statistics are similarly poor among top FDs. According to the 2010 Financial Director Salary Survey, women are now earning a pitiful 68 percent of the average remuneration of their male counterparts and only make up four percent of FTSE-100 and 250 FDs.

It is perhaps not surprising, then, that most think the glass ceiling remains very much intact. Research for the Institute of Leadership and Management found that 73 percent of women believe the glass ceiling still exists and more than a third of women believe their gender has hindered their career progression.

Even though she is part of a miniscule minority, however, Westdale is a perfect example of how it can be well and truly shattered. She has landed the top job in a male-dominated profession. But she herself can't bring any more clarity to the problem of why she is a minority.

"I don't personally know what that disconnect is. Is it that women are making personal choices simply not to go in that direction? Is there a glass ceiling still, to this day? Are the requirements of the job not conducive to other choices that women might want to make?" she says. "I don't know the answer, but I certainly think there is something."

Maybe part of the problem is that women are often compared to other women when they reach the highest echelons of business. Westdale was recently picked out in a list of 25 women who are doing outstanding work in commercial insurance, reinsurance, risk management, employee benefits and related fields. Being selected as a "woman to watch" is certainly prestigious, but Westdale thinks it can also be unhelpful. She believes women should be compared to all their peers, male and female.

She recalls an article she recently read about Ruth Porat, CFO of Morgan Stanley (The New York Observer ran a piece about her entitled "Morgan Stanley CFO may succeed despite her ovaries"), which highlights the problem. "It didn't talk about her as a Wall Street CFO; it spoke about her as a female Wall Street CFO. And it compared her to the only two other female Wall Street CFOs in the past. I thought that was interesting, and a little sad," admits Westdale. "She is a very accomplished woman, and I don't know why she couldn't be compared to her peer group."

But things are shifting. After serving as CNA's senior vice president for corporate financial planning and analysis, and later becoming internal CFO for its property and casualty operations, Westdale took four years out to start a family. Leaving CNA with no maternity arrangements – and no expectation that she'd return – Westdale found herself in familiar territory after coming back to the workforce as CFO for Aon Benfield, in charge of integrating CNA.