It is International Women’s Day next Sunday and, as usual, industrial quantities of data has been pouring forth to highlight the current state of womanhood.
The numbers are, as ever, infuriating.
More than a century after countries began to make March 8th the annual day for marking female advancement, the share of women who can vote, work, get educated and run stuff has never been higher.
But for a group that makes up half the global population, that share is still meagre – and, worse, progress in many areas is still feeble.
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In politics, only 29 of the world’s 200-odd countries had a female head of state or government last month – and at current rates, the UN thinks women won’t catch up with men for another 130 years.
It may take even longer to end a stubbornly persistent pay gap that means women worldwide get about 77 cents for every dollar men earn for work of equal value.
In business, after decades of effort to advance women, the share of female chief executives in the 500 biggest US companies rose to a mighty 11 per cent last year, barely any better than the 9 per cent of FTSE 100 companies run by a woman in 2025.
Even in sectors such as asset management, where performance numbers are supposed to determine who succeeds and fails, research shows female portfolio managers earn about 25 per cent less than comparable white men, as do minority managers. Minority women earn more than 60 per cent less than white male peers.
Why is progress so slow on so many measures? Culprits abound. Not enough affordable childcare or salary transparency. Too little paid paternity leave and other measures that normalise the idea of men taking the breaks that interrupt female careers.
[ The cost of being a woman: pay gaps, pensions deficits and product pricesOpens in new window ]
There is also what a World Bank report last week called the “shockingly large” gap between the degree of equality in the laws that governments pass and the extent to which those laws are enforced. The gulf is so big that only 4 per cent of women live in countries that have anything like full legal equality.
But what if the puny pace of progress is even bleaker than this? What if it is not only being fuelled by an absence of policies, or weak law enforcement, but by an absence of women themselves?
This thought springs from an analysis of more than 40 employers involved in international health that have had to report their gender pay gaps since 2017 under UK law.
The Global 50/50 think tank says that on average, the eight years of data show the pay gap at groups led by a female chief executive was 4.3 percentage points smaller than at organisations led by men.
That is a meaningful difference, the authors say, in a sample where the overall pay gap was just under 9 per cent.
We are of course talking here about correlation, not causation. But the findings back up other studies that have suggested there is a link between female bosses and lower gender pay gaps at US schools and non-profit outfits, as well as the top ranks of NHS managers and Welsh housing associations.
Why so? It could be because organisations led by women already have robust gender equality policies. But some analysts think female chief executives may be keener to introduce such policies and, importantly, more likely to evaluate men and women’s leadership potential evenly.
Also, women might feel more confident about, say, negotiating a higher salary if the chief executive is also female.
It needs to be said that the evidence is mixed in other areas, such as the extent to which female political leaders promote their sisters into ministerial jobs. A recent study of nearly 300 European cabinets shows left-wing male prime ministers promoted women more than left-wing female PMs, while there was no difference on the right.
Still, in business and public services, it does seem to make sense for women to work for women – if they can. As each successive International Women’s Day makes clear, that is easier said than done and likely to stay that way for years.
As it happens, I work for a woman because The Financial Times’s editor is female. But I easily might not in an industry where, like so many others, only 27 per cent of top editors are women, even though an average 40 per cent of journalists are female.
It could be far worse. But it also could be a long time before it gets better. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
