Gender Diversity in the C-suite

In March of 2024, S&P Global published an alarming report: for the first time in two decades, C-suite women lost seats in the S&P Total Market Index. In 2022, women held 12.2% of the ~15,000 C-suite positions across publicly traded U.S. firms. However, this regressed to just 11.8% by the end of 2023.

While the report offers an overview of C-suite gender diversity, it does not examine women’s representation within specific leadership roles. Understanding these nuances is key to moving past gender diversity generalizations toward a more substantive analysis of those with power and influence. Those listed as an organization’s top team provide a clearer indicator of where power truly resides within a company’s structure and hierarchy.

To better understand how women’s representation is changing within specific leadership roles across America’s largest public organizations, Russell Reynolds Associates analyzed the C-suites of the top 100 companies in the S&P 500 (referred to as the S&P 100 in this report). We learned that:

• Compared to our 2022 gender diversity analysis, we are no closer to overall parity
• Men are 2.5x more likely than women to be executives—and 10.2x more likely to be CEOs—in the S&P 100’s top leadership teams
• Women are severely under-represented in roles that matter most for reaching the top job, including CFO, COO, and P&L leadership positions
• Only six S&P 100 organizations have achieved gender parity on their senior leadership teams

The world needs more women leaders. Research shows that firms with more women in senior positions are more profitable, more socially responsible, and provide safer, higher-quality customer experiences. And RRA’s own research shows that women leaders perform alongside (or, on coaching & development measures, even outperform) their male counterparts.  And while change is happening, this data shows that it’s not happening fast—or consistently—enough.

Gender parity remains a long ways away

Unsurprisingly, in the two years since we last measured gender diversity in the S&P 100’s C-suites, women remain severely underrepresented.

There are 74% fewer women executives in leadership teams than there are in the US population (Figure 1). While women account for 50.5% of the US population benchmark, they account for just 29% of all executives in the top leadership teams of the S&P 100. Comparably, men account for 71% of the executives in those top leadership teams.

Figure 1: Men and women’s representations in the S&P 100 (2024)

_{Note: 50.5% of the US population are women.
Source: RRA Proprietary Analysis, S&P 100 Leadership Teams, 2024 (n=100 companies, 1553 executives); Population benchmark from US Census Bureau 2022 population estimates, https://data.census.gov/table/ACSST1Y2022.S0101?g=010XX00US}

Underrepresented where it matters most: Women leaders in the S&P 100 are absent from typical CEO feeder roles

Women hold a mere 9% of the CEO roles in the S&P 100. There needs to be 5.7x the number of women CEOs to be at parity with the population benchmark.

The traditional CEO feeder roles of CFO, COO, and P&L leaders show significant underrepresentation of women, which makes the path toward CEO that much more difficult (Figure 2). In looking at the COO role (8%), we would need to see 6.6x more women in the role to reach parity with the population benchmark, and 2.5x more women in the CFO role (20%).

Figure 2: S&P 100 gender distribution by executive roles

_{Source: RRA Proprietary Analysis, S&P 100 Leadership Teams, 2024 (n=100 companies, 1553 executives); Population benchmark from US Census Bureau 2022 population estimates, https://data.census.gov/table/ACSST1Y2022.S0101?g=010XX00US}

On a more encouraging note, some of these CEO feeder roles have seen a slight improvement in women’s representation since 2022. The share of women P&L leaders increased by 4pp (20% to 24%). Women CFOs increased by 2pp (18% in 2022 to 20% in 2024)—meaning that two more women stepped into CFO roles over the past two years. This aligns with our Global CFO Turnover Index,  which identified that, in H1 2024, 44 of the 163 CFOs appointed were women—the highest number of women CFO appointments in the past five years.

That said, women remain massively underrepresented in the COO role—of the 26 COOs currently in the S&P 100, only two are women (more on this below).

The CHRO role is the only S&P 100 C-suite position in which gender disparity favors women, as women hold 72% of these roles. However, according to our H1 2024 Global Leadership Monitor, CHROs are also the least likely member of the C-suite to aspire to the CEO role, with a mere 14% naming this as a career goal. This speaks to the motivation gaps in what women and men seek in their careers and shows that, despite women’s better representation in this space, it’s unlikely to meaningfully impact their ascendency to the CEO role—at least in the immediate future.

The gender breakdown by role demonstrates that S&P 100 organizations cannot make measurable progress towards gender parity in the top job unless they consider a broader range of executive backgrounds for their CEO candidates.

Deep dive: The COO role is often viewed as the “CEO in waiting” role. But does this approach overly favor men?

In 2022, RRA research found that 43% of CEOs in the Fortune 250 companies were promoted from the COO position, making it the most commonly held internal role prior to taking the top job. And our Global Leadership Monitor confirms that the majority of COOs align with this framing, with 59% agreeing that their career goal is to become a CEO. However, over the past two years, this goal only came to fruition for men.

Returning to the S&P 100, of the 35 men who were a COO in 2022, eight have been promoted to CEO or President at their same organization. One other left their organization for a president role elsewhere. But of the four women who’d held the COO role, none had been promoted—and three out of four left their operating roles to pursue boards/advisory work (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Where did the COOs of 2022 land in 2024?

_{Source: RRA Proprietary Analysis, S&P 100 Leadership Teams, n=39 COOs in 2022; 26 COOs in 2024.}

The COO remit has never been consistent—it varies significantly by industry and organization, and is often tied to a specific organizational need (e.g., transformation, training the next CEO). For example, of the eight organizations that promoted their COO to CEO since 2022, only three have hired a new COO. The rest have left the seat empty.

As such, there is a large amount of variation in the number of S&P COOs. And despite recent reports of COOs making a comeback, we found that the number of COOs in the S&P 100 actually dropped—from 39 to 26—over the last two years.

Our findings demonstrate that the COO role continues to be a key path into the CEO role (and in many instances may actually be a temporal “CEO in waiting” position). This stepping stone does not, however, appear to be working for women.

Conspicuous in their absence: A mere six organizations have achieved gender parity in the S&P 100

While it’s important to understand gender representation across the S&P 100’s executive population, it’s perhaps even more crucial to understand how it varies between companies. With that, we analyzed each S&P 100 leadership team, only including organizations with seven or more executives in the C-suite (97 in total.)

As of July of 2024, one S&P 100 senior leadership team is comprised of all men, and four have only one woman executive onboard (Figure 4). Thirty-nine C-suites have less than 25% women, and the majority (68) are comprised of less than one-third women.

Only six S&P 100 leadership teams are comprised of 50% or more women, meaning the vast majority (91) have yet to reach gender parity.

The six organizations that have achieved parity all look different from an industry and product offering perspective. That said, they are all well-established companies—with one exception, all of them were founded over fifty years ago.

Figure 4: S&P 100 leadership team gender diversity snapshot

Only companies with 7 or more executives analyzed.

_{Source: RRA Proprietary Analysis, S&P 100 Leadership Teams, 2024 (n=97 teams, 1540 executives)}

Making meaningful progress for women at the top

By focusing our analysis on the top leadership team, we can move past the generalities of gender diversity in leadership toward a more substantive analysis of those with the most power and influence. Principally, this avoids the blurring of leadership levels, which can result in an overly rosy picture in which progress on gender diversity at the next generation leadership level masks the real, typically more limited level of progress at the very top.

Our findings highlight the need for an expanded consideration set for executives brought forth to become CEO, especially as women executives remain significantly underrepresented in traditional CEO feeder roles. Furthermore, gender diversity in executive leadership means more than just equal representation of men and women across C-suites. Organizations must also ensure that women brought into executive leadership roles also gain a sense of belonging and see the direct impacts of their contributions to the organization’s success.

RRA is firmly committed to elevating more women to the top job. That’s why we launched Artemis, our program designed to accelerate the development of women from the world’s most influential organizations into the CEO seat. By expediting more women to the helm as CEOs, we can collectively unlock untapped talent, co-create new CEO leadership models, and build a strong network of like-minded peers and allies who will support each other throughout their careers.

Authors

Leah Christianson is a member of Russell Reynolds Associates’ Center for Leadership Insight. She is based in San Francisco.
Tom Handcock leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ Center for Leadership Insight. He is based in London.
Margot McShane co-leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ Board & CEO Advisory practice in the Americas, and is the co-founder of RRA Artemis. She is based in San Francisco.
Hetty Pye is a senior member of Russell Reynolds Associates’ Board & CEO Advisory practice, and is the co-founder of RRA Artemis. She is based in London.