What HR can do to help support women who have their eye on the C-suite

Women make up more than one-half of the US labor force, but the road to the C-suite could be characterized as “one step forward, two steps back.”

The rate at which women advanced to senior leadership positions in S&P Global Total Market Index companies slowed to the lowest rate in more than a decade in 2023, according to recent research from S&P Global. Female representation in the C-suite also declined for the first time since the firm began tracking these trends in 2005.

This data shows that HR departments still have work to do in order to support women seeking to advance to leadership positions in their companies.

Female representation in the C-suite drops. Growth in women’s representation for all senior positions in the S&P Global Total Market Index dropped to under 0.5% in 2023, compared to a 1.2% average in years prior. In the C-suite, women held 11.8% of about 15,000 available roles in publicly traded US firms. That’s down from 12.2% in 2022, the first decline S&P Global tracked in nearly 20 years.

Walgreens, Bumble, and H&M are among firms that saw female CEOs step down within the last year. While S&P Global didn’t diagnose the cause of the dip in C-suite women, the firm did note that company executives are mentioning “diversity” and “inclusion” on earnings calls less frequently than they did in 2020, when talk of DE&I peaked.

At the rate at which women are currently progressing, S&P Global estimates US firms may not reach parity in the C-suite until 2072, six to seven years later than the firm previously estimated.

The lack of gender parity in US firms contributes to a persistent gender wage gap of 85 cents on the dollar in the C-suite, HR Brew reported in March.

How can HR support women seeking to advance? The “representation gap” evident in the C-suite “gets started very much earlier on down the corporate ladder,” Jackie Cook, Morningstar’s director of stewardship, product strategy, and development, told us, discussing her research on pay disparities in March. She pointed to phenomena such as a “broken rung” that keeps many women from progressing to manager-level positions.

Indeed, separate research from S&P Global shows less than one-third (29%) of women held revenue-generating management roles as of 2023. Such roles, the firm wrote, “can be a stepping stone to the C-suite as they can provide experience in running businesses or making operational decisions.”

To combat women’s slowing momentum up the corporate ladder, employers may consider implementing female leadership development programs along with accountability measures, Gabriella Parente, an HR and leadership speaker and consultant, wrote on LinkedIn. Using gender-blind recruitment practices, as well as gender-neutral language on job postings, may also help mitigate these trends, she suggested.

In finding effective ways to boost female representation at the highest echelons of their firms, HR departments may also help boost their companies’ bottom line, as well as hang onto employees, a November 2023 report from BlackRock suggests. Companies that improve women’s representation at higher ranks tend to see lower turnover, while MSCI World Index companies with female CEOs tend to see higher returns on assets, the report found.