- 24 February 2026
Today’s FTSE Women Leaders Review reveals that women now hold 43% of board positions across the FTSE 350. This maintains the level reached last year and remains above the 40% target but signals that momentum towards gender parity has stalled.
Representation in key governance roles such as Company Secretary remains strong at 57%, yet the overall pace of change across senior leadership roles is slow. The data shows that despite meeting targets, year-on-year progress is minimal, raising a fundamental question: are organisations satisfied to plateau at 40%?
Across the Four Key Roles, only one demonstrates meaningful movement from 2024:
- Chairs – remains at 17%
- CEOs – slightly increased to 8%
- Senior Independent Directors – increased to 61%
- Finance Directors – slightly decreased to 21%
The disparity in executive leadership remains particularly stark, with women occupying just 8% of CEO roles in the FTSE 350. Appointment rates are also trending downward. FTSE 350 executive director appointments for women have dropped to 22% (from 25% last year), and non-executive appointments have fallen to 47% (from 51%). At these rates, and with board tenures often lasting six to nine years, progress toward sustained gender balance is likely to stall further.
These figures underscore a central point: without addressing the underlying issues, more intentional succession planning diversity at the top of UK business will continue to be subject to only marginal improvement. In our 2016 report with EY, Coming out of the Shadows, we concluded that companies need to:
- Look deeper into the organisation to identify and hep to develop its future leaders;
- Cast the net wider to identify potential directors; and
- Think further ahead than the immediate replacement of a retiring board member.
Kayla Schembri, Head of Policy at CGIUKI, said:
“What is most striking is that only 8% of FTSE 350 CEOs are women. This is more than a statistic; it is a structural issue. When nominations committees restrict their search to existing FTSE CEOs or C-suite leaders, they limit the pipeline and reinforce the very imbalance they are trying to solve. It becomes a bottleneck.
Good governance is a strategic enabler, and diversity is central to that. If organisations want sustainable leadership and stronger decision making, they must widen the criteria, rethink succession planning, and treat diversity as a governance imperative, not optional. It is disappointing, ten years on, that the lessons from our 2016 report have not been more effectively taken to heart.”
Reimagine the boardroom as a driver of equity, equality, diversity, and inclusion with CGUKI’s Transforming Boardroom Culture: Strategic Leadership, Governance & Inclusion.