While women represent 41% of the workforce, only 32% of senior leaders are female. As International Women’s Day approaches, Melissa Reed of H.I. Executive Consulting – global executive search firm and Walpole partner – explores the obstacles between women and senior leadership positions, as well as what businesses need to do to redress this underrepresentation.
While recent years have seen an increase in female leadership, women remain underrepresented in senior positions – occupying just over a third of such roles. At the very top level, female CEOs are, on average, older than their male counterparts, showing that female career development and executive hiring takes comparatively longer. Despite these challenges, research has indicated that companies with female leaders perform better than those with fewer women at senior levels.
These challenges have come into sharper focus in recent weeks, in January 2025, the US government moved to eliminate DEI programs in federal agencies and contractors. This executive order led to several major corporations, including Deloitte, Accenture, McDonald’s, and Walmart, scaling back or dismantling their DEI initiatives entirely. Such changes are reshaping how companies approach diversity in leadership, while raising concerns about whether progress made in female executive hiring will stall or even reverse.
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