Women on Boards and Beyond 2024

Women gain more board seats, but not top leadership roles

Female representation in corporate boardrooms continues to increase, but we found a different picture when looking at corporate leadership positions. According to Women on Boards and Beyond 2024, women occupy 27.3% of board seats at large- and mid-cap companies, constituents of the MSCI ACWI Index (as of October 2024) — a 1.5 percentage point increase from 2023. However, the report shows that men still largely occupy top executive roles, with female representation declining among these positions.

For 15 years, we have analyzed women's representation on corporate boards through our annual reports. This year we have broadened our focus to include women’s involvement on key board committees, examining the specific roles they play and the factors that may impact their board tenure.

Key insights

• Fewer leadership roles. Female representation in certain leadership roles declined, particularly in emerging markets where the percentage of female board chairs, CEOs and CFOs all fell below 2023 levels.

• Committee gaps. While all-male boards were nearly non-existent in developed markets, 10.6% of nomination committees, 13.1% of pay committees and 8.1% of audit committees lacked female members in those markets.

• Nominating role. Nomination committees, crucial for shaping board composition, were the least likely to be chaired by women across all markets reviewed. Further, boards with female nomination committee chairs tended to have more female directors overall.

• Retention challenges. Board continuity among male directors was higher than for their female counterparts across all markets in our analysis.

• Financial performance. MSCI ACWI Index constituents with at least 30% female directors achieved cumulative returns that were 18.9% higher than those without, between July 31, 2019, and Sept. 30, 2024.¹

• Race and ethnicity. Ethnic minority representation in corporate leadership positions remained limited based on our analysis of U.K. and U.S. firms.

Women in Corporate Leadership Roles

The interactive chart below provides a visual overview of female representation on boards of directors and board committees across developed and emerging markets, as of October 2024.

Choose an index and hover over any bar for data on female representation among constituents of your chosen index.

• ¹ We compared the returns of companies with at least 30% female directors versus those without, rebalanced monthly between July 31, 2019, and Sept. 30, 2024. Correlation does not mean causation.