As of June 2026, the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2026 found that women represented a majority of workers in four separate industries. Females accounted for 59.9 per cent of those employed in Healthcare and Care Services, 54.2 per cent in Education, 51.7 per cent in Consumer Services, and 50.6 per cent in Government and Public Sector roles. Females accounted for roughly a quarter of the workforce across Oil, Gas and Mining (25.2 per cent) and Infrastructure (23.6 per cent). Female labour force participation across the surveyed economies climbed from 39.9 per cent in 2015 to 42.0 per cent in 2025, then dipped slightly to 41.8 per cent by June 2026, according to the findings. Between 2015 and 2023, the proportion of women holding senior leadership roles — spanning vice president, C-suite, and board positions — climbed from 26.7 per cent to 29.4 per cent, a level that held steady in the years that followed. Across a survey of 39 economies, women occupied around 19 per cent of chief executive positions at the top of corporate hierarchies, while accounting for approximately one quarter of chief financial officer and chief operating officer roles. The findings noted that even when accounting for equivalent executive pipeline experience, women remain underrepresented in appointments to chief executive positions relative to their male counterparts. The data point to obstacles that extend well beyond initial entry into leadership pathways, embedded within the evaluation and appointment processes that determine who advances to the most senior positions, with women remaining concentrated predominantly in functional rather than executive roles. Approximately two-thirds of chief human resources officer and chief people officer posts were occupied by women, while they accounted for just under half of chief marketing officer appointments. By comparison, leadership in technical areas remained at a low level. According to the findings, fewer than one in five chief information officers and just 8.6 per cent of chief technology officers are women, while the share of board seats held by women nearly doubled over the decade from 2014 to 2024, rising from 15.2 per cent to 29.3 per cent. Their share of board leadership roles climbed from 3.2 per cent to 5.2 per cent across the same timeframe. Among Fortune Global 500 companies, the number of women holding chief executive positions more than doubled over a decade, rising from 14 to 32 between 2015 and 2025, which lifted their proportion from 2.8 per cent to 6.4 per cent. Among individual industries in 2025, the utilities sector led on female chief executive representation at 17 per cent, with telecommunications and media coming in at 11 per cent. The retail, energy, and construction sectors each accounted for approximately nine per cent. Within the top 100 Fortune Global 500 firms ranked by revenue, female chief executives numbered just three through much of the period from 2015 to 2020, climbed to a high of nine by 2023, and stood at seven as of 2025.
