Women execs have tougher climb to top rung

We’ve written about glass ceilings and glass cliffs, but to quote the Beatles, let’s look through the glass onion.

What’s the glass onion? Well, it’s a metaphor I’m using to describe the multilayered challenges facing women who aspire to be CEOs. The good news is, there are more female CEOs than in years before, including in the S&P 500 and the Fortune 500, and more women occupy other C-suite roles that often provide launching pads for future CEOs.

However, a study published in May by Eos Foundation found that for every 10 women who reach C-suite “launch positions” in S&P 100 companies — think chief operating officer, chief financial officer, division head — only three reach the top rung of CEO. Men, however, occupy 76% of launch positions and represent 92% of all S&P 100 CEOs, indicating that women’s careers tend to peak sooner than men’s.

Also, women CEOs typically take longer to get to the top than male CEOs, with more women having previously served as president than their male counterparts. And not all C-suite roles are created equal; chief human resources and marketing officers are less likely to jump directly to CEO, and far more women occupy these positions than profits-and-loss executive roles. Finally, women of color are far less likely to be CEOs than white women; among S&P 500 companies in 2024, just six Asian women were CEOs, but no Black or Hispanic women were.

In the October issue of Virginia Business, there are 12 CEOs among this year’s 45 Virginia Women in Leadership Awards honorees — all of whom have multiple decades of experience and significant professional achievements. Meanwhile, quite a few other winners are at the pinnacle of their organizations, where executive director, president or a similar position is the top role.

On the theme of executive leadership, this issue also highlights Virginia’s gubernatorial race, to be determined in November. We know already it will be a historic election, as the commonwealth’s next governor will be a woman for the first time — either Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears or Democrat Abigail Spanberger.

One can’t help but notice, meanwhile, that both women have more experience in elected office — Spanberger having served three terms in Congress, and Earle-Sears having been a state delegate and now lieutenant governor — than our current leader, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who had never run for elected office before seeking the governorship in 2021.

This leads me to peel the glass onion a bit more, because over the years, I’ve read and heard anecdotal evidence that women are less likely to apply for jobs for which they aren’t fully qualified. We’re also less likely to negotiate higher salaries before accepting a new job, and among women who seek elected office, many are encouraged by multiple people to do so before running.

When we think about CEOs or political candidates, they often are very confident in their abilities and willing to put themselves forward as leaders who can make companies (or states) reach higher levels of profit and success. And certainly, we know women who have that level of self-confidence, but for decades, women had to overcome lower expectations in the workplace — that they were just working until they got married and had children, or that women were naturally better at “soft skills” jobs that don’t typically lead to being chief executives.

In this moment, as businesses and public sector workplaces revise and repeal their diversity, equity and inclusion policies due to the federal government’s opposition, I wonder what effect this will have on women’s ability to attain CEO status in the future.

While we celebrate our 2025 Women in Leadership awardees, let’s also give some thought to how to maintain and improve women’s numbers in top leadership.