The latter half of 2025 saw some of the UK’s most prominent female chief executives exit their roles. Diageo’s Debra Crew, GSK’s Emma Walmsley and Severn Trent’s Liv Garfield all announced they would be leaving. Each was replaced by a man.
While women have stepped into other top jobs — Zoë Yujnovich has taken over at National Grid, while BP appointed Meg O’Neill — the recent departures are reviving questions about why they still remain so scarce at the very top of UK corporate life.
The latest FTSE Women Leaders Review report showed that in the past five years there had been little movement in the number of female CEOs in the FTSE 100. The count increased from eight roles in 2021 to nine in 2025. There were 10 women CEOs in 2023.
“Have we made significant progress? . . . Nope,” says Vivienne Artz, chief executive of the review.
The stubbornly low proportion of female CEOs contrasts with more successful efforts to increase diversity across boardrooms. Female representation on FTSE 100 boards increased from 39 per cent in 2021 to 44 per cent last year, driven by “the significant increase in non-executive director roles”.
Recruiters say that years of effort to increase representation have been hindered by broader pressures on leadership, and long-standing failures in the executive pipeline that rob women of experience headhunters look for to fill top jobs.
A US-led backlash against diversity measures has contributed to some multinational companies quietly softening language around diversity, including speaking broadly about inclusion rather than enacting specific measures to boost the representation of women or ethnic minorities.
In a tumultuous business environment, board directors also privately say they are preoccupied with more immediate threats to their businesses — from geopolitical instability and cyber risk to technological shifts.
Rupal Kantaria, a partner at consultancy Oliver Wyman and UK vice-chair of the 30% Club advocacy group, says this stress can reinforce old instincts. “As pressure mounts — economically, geopolitically — a man is seen as a ‘safer’ choice.”
This often means that women get given an even harder time, both in recruitment and when in the role. Data from executive search firm Russell Reynolds Associates showed that between 2018 and 2025, an average of 32 per cent of female CEOs globally were dismissed within three years, compared with 24 per cent of men. In one recent high-profile departure, Jill Popelka, chief executive of Darktrace, was forced out by the company’s private equity owners after just 16 months as they felt the business was not growing fast enough.
“The CEO role is harder than ever before, and all CEOs are under pressure to demonstrate rapid transformation of their companies faster than ever before. Boards are becoming increasingly impatient,” says Laura Sanderson at Russell Reynolds Associates.
A lack of investment in women early in the executive pipeline and a series of personal choices through mid-career also contributes to a perception women lack the experience and skills for the top job.
Though better represented in other executive roles, women are less likely to hold revenue-generating responsibilities, which are traditionally feeder positions for the chief executive. Russell Reynolds found women made up 21 per cent of profit-and-loss leadership roles in the FTSE 100, including 28 per cent of chief operating officers and a quarter of chief financial officers, but 79 per cent of chief human resource officers.
Artz says criteria from CEO headhunters are often “very specific” and look “at previous experience rather than skills and capabilities”. The “menu of requirements” tends to centre on whether individuals have held “P&L roles”, with total accountability for financial performance, which often means it is less likely a woman would be chosen for a leadership position.
Research from MIT Sloan finds the gender gap in promotions is often not based on ability. Women received higher performance ratings than men, but scored lower on “potential”, leaving them roughly 14 per cent less likely to advance. This is despite women with equivalent potential scores going on to outperform men and being less likely to quit.
“Men tend to receive boosts all the way through their careers, while women tend to face blockers,” Mary Ann Sieghart, founding partner of The Authority Gap consultancy, says. “These aren’t necessarily intentional, but they accumulate like compound interest, leading to a wide divergence in opportunity and attainment.” Advantages might include stretch assignments, exposure to clients, invitations to leadership meetings or social settings, and sponsorship from senior figures, all of which “makes men more promotion-ready, faster”, she says.
A study by the Insead Balance in Business initiative, an alumni network associated with the school, interviewed 30 female CEOs and found women tended to apply for promotions only when they met all the criteria — even though this was not strictly necessary. Many “felt they ‘needed to be 120 per cent ready’ while male peers leapt in and learnt on the job,” the study’s authors said.
Kit Bingham, partner at executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, says companies have been too short-term in how they think about the executive pipeline. It “needs to be seen as a 25-year project” with investment early in women’s careers, and when they most often falter, such as during childbearing years and early parenthood.
A report last October by Women In Work, which runs an annual summit, in partnership with LinkedIn, showed flexible working models, career breaks and avoiding gender segregation in certain roles all helped women attain leadership positions. Companies with a record of career breaks for caregiving were 27 per cent more likely to have gender-balanced or female-led teams.
Yet the few women who make it into chief executive roles often report being punished more harshly for mis-steps and scrutinised more closely by analysts and the media. The Insead Balance in Business study found they faced a “double standard”: criticised both for being too assertive and too accommodating.
In her new book The Ambition Penalty, Stefanie O’Connell argues that women who attempt to push for promotions or pay rises are more likely to be branded aggressive or demanding, and are less likely to secure the improvements they seek.
“When a woman gets a rare opportunity to step into a position of power she is far less likely to receive the same support, respect and resources to succeed as a man in the same position,” says O’Connell.
“This . . . is often paired with a pattern of appointing women to these top jobs only when organisations are struggling or facing a crisis, giving organisations a scapegoat when they fall short and reinforcing a narrative that women simply aren’t ‘capable’ or ‘cut out’ for these positions.”