Gender Diversity in the C-suite

While women hold 42% of the board seats at the United Kingdom’s biggest listed companies, there are still too few in top leadership positions, with a mere 9 women holding FTSE 100 CEO roles.

The UK has had notable success in driving gender parity in the boardroom using an entirely voluntary approach, in line with its “Comply or Explain” approach to corporate governance. The Hampton-Alexander Review (later FTSE Women Leaders) was successful in moving women board participation from 12% in 2010 to the current level, helped by both shareholder and media scrutiny. However, there has been more progress at non-executive than at executive level.

Now, to enable meaningful change within senior leadership ranks, we first need to understand how women’s representation is—or is not—changing within specific executive functions across the UK’s largest companies. Understanding these nuances helps us move past gender diversity generalizations toward a more substantive analysis of the career trajectories of those with decision-making power and influence. To do this, Russell Reynolds Associates analyzed the C-suites of the top 100 organizations in the FTSE, learning that:

• Women hold 32% of all leadership roles in the FTSE 100. While this is slightly better than the S&P 100’s 29%, we are still some way away from reaching overall leadership gender parity in the UK’s top organizations.
• Women are severely under-represented in roles that matter most for reaching the top job, including P&L leadership, CFO, and COO positions.
• UK women leaders hold significantly more strategy roles than their US counterparts—but, to date, this has had little bearing on CEO pipelines.
• Only 12 FTSE 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.

Men and women leaders are unequally represented in the FTSE 100

There are 61% fewer women executives in leadership teams than there are in the UK population (Figure 1). While women account for 51% of the UK population benchmark, they account for just 32% of all executives in the top leadership teams of the FTSE 100. Comparably, men account for 68% of the executives in those top leadership teams.

Figure 1: Men and women’s representations in the FTSE 100 (2024)

^{Source: RRA Proprietary Analysis, FTSE100 Leadership Teams, 2024 (n=97 companies, 992 executives); Population benchmark from Statista UK population by gender 2022 | Statista. Data on executive teams was pulled from Boardex in August 2024 and was categorized and analyzed in September 2024.}

Despite better overall representation than their American counterparts, women leaders in the FTSE 100 are underrepresented where it matters most

With women holding only 9% of the FTSE 100 CEO roles, there needs to be 5.6x the number of women CEOs to be at parity with the UK’s population benchmark.

What’s more, the traditional CEO feeder roles of P&L leaders, CFOs, and COOs also show significant underrepresentation of women, making the path toward CEO that much harder (Figure 2).

Within P&L leadership positions, where women make up only 21% of executives, we need to see 2.4x more women appointed to reach parity. Additionally, 28% of executives in the COO role are women, and 25% in the CFO role are women, meaning we would need to double the proportion of women in these roles to reach parity with the population benchmark.

Figure 2: FTSE 100 gender distribution by executive roles (2024)

^{Source: RRA Proprietary Analysis, FTSE100 Leadership Teams, 2024 (n=97 companies, 992 executives); Population benchmark from Statista UK population by gender 2022 | Statista. Data on executive teams was pulled from Boardex in August 2024 and was categorized and analyzed in September 2024.}

That said, women in the FTSE 100 are experiencing better representation in some of these roles than their S&P counterparts. While women hold 9% of the CEO roles in both the FTSE and S&P 100, women CFOs are more common in the UK, as women hold 25% of these roles in the FTSE 100, versus 20% in the S&P 100. Given CFOs serve alongside CEOs on the main board of FTSE 100 companies, this is also helpful in increasing the pool of potential women CEOs.

Finally, there are also significantly more women COOs in the FTSE 100 than the S&P 100—28% vs 8%, respectively.

Figure 3: Share of FTSE 100 vs S&P 100 women leaders in CEO & CEO feeder roles

^{Source: RRA Proprietary Analysis, FTSE100 Leadership Teams, 2024 (n=97 companies, 992 executives); S&P 100 Leadership Teams, 2024 (n=100 companies, 1553 executives)}

UK women hold significantly more strategy leadership roles than their US counterparts—but this rarely impacts CEO parity

FTSE 100 women are far better represented than S&P 100 women in strategy roles than their US peers, holding 36% of the index’s strategy leadership roles, compared to women in the S&P 100 holding only 22% of these positions (Figure 4).

FTSE women are also nearly twice as likely to hold product, engineering, and science roles than women in the S&P 100 (39% vs 20%). However, given that there are far fewer of these roles in FTSE 100 top leadership teams, this does little to further overall gender parity for women in the UK.

Figure 4: Share of FTSE 100 vs S&P 100 women leaders in product, engineering, and strategy roles

^{Source: RRA Proprietary Analysis, FTSE100 Leadership Teams, 2024 (n=97 companies, 992 executives); S&P 100 Leadership Teams, 2024 (n=100 companies, 1553 executives)}

 

Better representation of women in leadership roles across functions is of course an encouraging development. However, in order to shift the dial in a meaningful way towards gender parity in the CEO role, it’s critical to identify more opportunities for women to take on P&L leadership roles. This is one of the key tenets of the RRA Artemis movement, which is committed to elevating more women to the top job.”

Hetty Pye
Russell Reynolds Associates, Co-founder of RRA Artemis

 

Only 12 FTSE 100 organizations have achieved gender parity on their senior leadership teams

While it’s important to understand gender representation across the FTSE 100’s executive population, it’s perhaps even more crucial to understand how it varies between companies. With that, we analyzed each FTSE 100 leadership team, only including organizations with five or more executives in the C-suite (90 in total.)

As of August 2024, one FTSE 100 senior leadership team is comprised of all men, and 12 have only one woman executive onboard (Figure 5). Twenty-five C-suites have less than 25% women, and 42 are comprised of less than one-third women.

Only 12 FTSE 100 leadership teams are comprised of 50% or more women. While this is better than the S&P’s six leadership teams at gender parity, it still showcases how much work the FTSE still has to do to reach an equitable leadership threshold.

Of those 12 organizations, women lead three of them and hold half of their CEO feeder roles. Beyond that, the companies all look different from an industry, product, and years of existence perspective. This shows that parity does not rely on how an organization defines itself; it’s a function of demonstrated commitment to meaningful diversity at the top.

Figure 5: FTSE 100 leadership team gender diversity snapshot

^{Source: RRA Proprietary Analysis, FTSE100 Leadership Teams, 2024 (n=90 companies). Population benchmark from Statista UK population by gender 2022 | Statista. Data on executive teams was pulled from Boardex in August 2024 and was categorized and analyzed in September 2024.}

Making meaningful progress for the UK’s women at the top

With women holding only 9% of CEO positions in the FTSE 100 and only 21% of the most common CEO feeder role (P&L leadership), the FTSE 100’s gender imbalances risk getting stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle.

Given that women executives remain significantly underrepresented in traditional CEO feeder roles, our findings highlight two imperatives:

1. The need for stronger, more gender-balanced succession pipelines across P&L, CFO, and COO roles, and
2. A broader consideration set for executives who are qualified to become CEO.

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 the progress of 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.

 

“Given that women account for over half of the UK’s population, executive gender balance is a good indicator of how successful an organization’s succession and talent planning truly is. If boards don’t manage their talent pipelines effectively, the number of women in senior decision-making roles will remain disappointingly low.”

Laura Sanderson
Russell Reynolds Associates

 

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.
Laura Sanderson co-leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ Board & CEO Advisory practice in Europe, and co-leads the firm’s operations in Europe, Middle East and India. She is based in London.