For every 10 Female CEOs in Europe, there’s one called Dave

Women are still a long way from equal representation at the very highest levels, even as more make it into the workforce and early management roles.

Progress has been steady in some areas, but when it comes to CEO positions, the numbers still show a clear imbalance – and in many cases, not much has changed in years.

A new study by Cognism reveals that CEOs named “David” exceed one-tenth of all female CEOs. And while the UK outperforms the rest of Europe for female representation in leadership roles, women still account for less than a quarter of CEOs across UK businesses – underlying how far there is still to go before female leadership reflects the wider workforce.

The scale of the gender gap in leadership roles

Women are still significantly underrepresented in Europe’s top business roles, with progress towards gender balance in leadership remaining slow and uneven across industries and countries.

B2B data specialist Cognism reveals that there are enough CEOs named David across Europe to account for more than one in 10 of all female CEOs.

The data also found that women occupy just 18% of CEO positions, and the executive roles most commonly seen as “stepping stones” to the top job remain heavily male-dominated, with women making up just 26% of Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) and 25% of Chief Operating Officers (COO).

And while the UK leads Europe on female CEO representation at 22% – ahead of France (16%) and Germany (13%) – women remain heavily underrepresented at the very top of British business. According to Russell Reynolds Associates, the FTSE 100 ended 2025 with just eight female CEOs – the same number reported in 2021.

Why hiring more women isn’t solving the problem

In the UK, there’s only a relatively small gap in employment rates between men and women, with male employment at 77.6% and female employment at 72.4%.

This might suggest the problem is simply about hiring more women, but Cognnism’s data suggests that the real drop-off happens later, with fewer women progressing into senior roles and executive positions once they’re already in the workforce.

While women accounted for 47% of entry-level jobs, this figure declined to 41% for team leads, 38% for middle management, 37% for senior leadership, and then 29% for executive-level positions.

Viktoria Ruubel, Chief Product, Data & Technology Officer at Cognism, explains: “The fix isn’t about hiring more women at the bottom and hoping it works out. 

“It’s about looking hard at how you promote, who gets visibility on high-stakes projects, and whether your leadership criteria are actually measuring what matters or just pattern-matching to what’s worked before.”

What needs to change in leadership pipelines?

Improving gender balance in leadership will need more than increasing the number of women entering the workforce. Instead, businesses will need to address the structural barriers that limit progression into senior roles.

This includes reviewing how promotions are divided, who is given visibility on high-profile projects, and who is given visibility on high-profile projects, and whether leadership criteria unintentionally favour traditional (meaning often male) career paths.

After all, female-led businesses were found to have smaller gender pay gaps in late 2025, while companies run by women also saw lower insolvency rates than male-led firms, which was 0.41% compared to 0.7%, meaning male-led businesses were 71% more likely to become insolvent.

“Nobody sets out to narrow diversity – but the urgency of growth does it quietly if you’re not paying attention,” Ruubel adds. “The companies that maintain diversity through scaling are the ones that treat it as an operating discipline, not an afterthought.”