Women representation drags for CEO, tech-related top positions
The chief people officer (CPO) and chief human resources officer (CHRO) roles have emerged as the top C-suite positions with the highest share of women, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF), which found stalling progress in women's representation in top-level management roles.
The WEF's Global Gender Gap Report 2026 found that 65% of CPO positions as of December 2025 were held by women, similar to 64% of CHRO roles.
Women's representation in these roles is significantly higher than other top-level management positions in the WEF report, which cited data from the LinkedIn Economic Graph Research Institute.
The share of women in chief executive officer roles is only at 19%, and is even lower for chief technology officer roles at only nine per cent.
"Women are more strongly represented in some functionally oriented C-suite roles, accounting for around two-thirds of chief human resources officers and chief people officers in the LinkedIn sample and slightly less than half of chief marketing officers," the report read.
"By contrast they remain underrepresented in technology-oriented leadership roles that have gained prominence as digital transformation and AI reshape corporate leadership structures."
Stalling representation for women
These findings come in the wake of stalling women's representation in top-level positions, such as vice presidents, C-suite, and board members, putting them at risk of falling behind amid an evolving global market.
The WEF report revealed that women's representation in top-level positions has remained at approximately 29.4% since 2023, after a period of relatively strong growth from 26.7% in 2015.
But stalled growth is happening amid an evolving market, according to the report, where employment alone no longer guarantees economic stability or mobility.
It also noted that the uneven distribution of women across C-suite roles has direct implications for their pathways to an organisation's most senior positions.
"As C-suite structures evolve, these differences matter not only for current representation, but also for women's access to the functions and experiences that can provide pathways to the most senior leadership positions," the report read.
'Drop from the top'
The low representation of women when it comes to top-level management roles has been attributed to how fewer women progress through seniority levels within industries.
WEF described this gap as the "drop from the top," which has been tracked across recent editions of the Global Gender Gap report.
"Data from June 2026 shows that women's representation from entry-level positions to the C-suite drops by half, from 46.0%to 23.0%, on average across 57 economies," the report read.
It noted, however, that the average "drop from the top" has narrowed slightly across industries by less than 10 percentage points amid faster gains in women's representation at the C-suite level than at entry level.
"Sustaining progress toward parity will therefore require building on gains in senior leadership while accelerating women's representation at the entry point to strengthen the leadership pipeline over time," the report read.
