Companies are touting women in the C-suite – but their ranks are falling

Throughout the past few years, there's been a dramatic rise in the number of companies committing to increasing their gender balance at the highest echelons of management, both within financial services and beyond. McKinsey and Company's most recent annual Women in the Workplace report showed nearly three in four human resources leaders now said that DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion – initiatives are critical to their companies' future success, with many placing a particular emphasis at gender balance at the very top.

Yet recent research shows that these commitments and stated initiatives are not necessarily translating into reality. Data from Standard & Poor Market Intelligence, published in March, shows the growth in women's representation among all senior leadership positions in the US dropped to the lowest rate in more than a decade in 2023. And across all C-Suite positions, women lost seats for the first time since S&P started collecting data in 2005.

The analysis by S&P also showed executives at publicly traded firms spent less time talking about diversity and inclusion while on earnings calls with shareholders. In 2023, mentions of the topic fell to multi-year lows.

Now, academics and organisational experts warn that companies deprioritising gender diversity risk losing out – reputationally and financially.