COUNCIL leader Sarah Hayward has said she will boycott events involving all-male panels and is calling on businesses and institutions in Camden to stop hosting them.

She said she had turned down an invitation to an event hosted by financial auditors KPMG last week which had a panel of only men, but this was not a one-off issue.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’m the only woman in any meeting,” Cllr Hayward told the New Journal. “If we only represent men as holding power women have nothing to aspire to and large companies like KPMG can and should take a lead.”

Although she broadcast her feelings with a tweet aimed at KPMG’s invitation, she said she was not singling out the company for criticism as it was a wider problem. 

Hi @kpmg thanks for invite to work place week event you're hosting. But panel is all men, so no thanks. Women work too (and lead & manage)

— Sarah Hayward (@Sarah_Hayward) October 22, 2015

“This morning: 50 odd people at a London First-organised breakfast, and there were two women,” she said. “This type of thing happens too frequently and almost never the other way, unless I’m talking about childcare, of course.” She added that she wanted big companies in Camden which host events to try harder to bring more equality to their panels. “I don’t go to events with all-male panels and I haven’t for a long time,” Cllr Hayward said. “But I’ve decided to start calling it out.”

She recently said that some Labour Party members had told her they could not support her run in the Holborn and St Pancras parliamentary selection contest last year because they thought a man would be taken more seriously as an MP.

Unusually for local ­government, the leading figures from the four parties represented at the Town Hall are all women, while the ruling cabinet has a 50/50 gender split.

Cllr Hayward’s Conservative counterpart Councillor Claire-Louise Leyland, leader of the opposition, said she would try to work with event organisers rather than take to Twitter.

“For example, one could call and suggest other speakers,” she said. “Many people are only too pleased to expand networks in this way. It is possible the women asked to speak weren’t available to make it due to other arrangements.”

Cllr Leyland added: “I’m not in favour of quotas and all-women shortlists. I really do want the best candidate in any role, regardless of gender.”

Green councillor Sian Berry, the party’s mayoral candidate, said: “In my job in transport it’s very often the case I am the only woman on a panel and it can’t go on. But there is more awareness about it now. 

“What I would do is suggest other people for the panel, because there are always at least four or five women they could invite to speak. It’s not that women aren’t out there to invite. It’s time companies thought more about how it looks having only men on panels.”

Liberal Democrat councillor Flick Rea said she did not support a boycott.

“It’s not something I’d do. If you don’t go to these events then there is one less woman at them,” she added. “How can you make your voice heard if you are not there?”