International Women’s Day is celebrated on 8 March. The 2025 Grant Thornton Women in Business report – now in its 21st year – is out and the numbers are startling. Globally, women currently hold just 34% of senior leadership positions, up 0.5 percentage points from 2024.
At this pace, we’ll not see gender parity in senior management roles in mid-market companies until 2051. That’s a generation away – but perhaps not for women in South Africa.
Says Agnes Dire, board chairperson and director at SNG Grant Thornton: “In South Africa, women already make up 47.2% of senior management roles. This puts us in the lead globally according to this study. While it’s important to take a moment to recognise the work done by so many to achieve this, we are reminded that moving the needle toward parity has taken generations.
“The International Women’s Day 2025 theme ‘Accelerate Action’ must remain an imperative if we are to level the playing field for this generation of women in business.”
The report notes that a lack of meaningful progress puts another generation of women at risk. At the current pace of change, a young woman beginning her career today will likely spend more than a quarter of a century before seeing gender-balanced leadership in mid-market firms. So, what drives progress to parity?
The 2025 Grant Thornton Women in Business report offers some insight.
Gender diversity has strategic value
Given that small and mid-market firms make up the largest part of the global economy, accounting for 90% of all businesses and creating two out of three jobs worldwide, there’s pressure and a responsibility to accelerate action on gender.
What incentivises this action is what many business leaders already know: that gender-balanced teams can bring better performance.
The most frequently cited impact of gender equality strategies, selected by one in three business leaders (31.1%), is that the strategy at their company has helped create a culture where employees all feel they are treated equally.
A similar proportion (27%), say their equality strategies mean employees feel there is an inclusive work environment. Positively, nearly a quarter of business leaders (23.1%) say equality strategies have made their firm more innovative.
The upshot is that gender diversity is no longer perceived as a mere obligation, but as something which has strategic value, says the report. Balanced teams make better decisions, are able to draw on broader perspectives and have more informed discussions. And more equal firms are better places to work, which has a transformative impact on every aspect of a firm.
As a result, no women at the top is an increasingly rare occurrence. Globally only 4.1% of mid-market firms say they have no women in their senior teams. In South Africa, that number is 2.2%, down from 8.5% in 2024.
Evolving roles
The report notes an annual rise in the percentage of women holding every role that makes up the senior management team. In mid-market businesses, 47.6% of human resources (HR) officer roles, 44.6% of chief financial officer (CFO) roles and 33.3% of chief marketing officer (CMO) roles are held by women. The percentage of businesses with female chief executive officers (CEO) has only risen 2.6pp since 2024 to 21.7%, however.
In South Africa, we are doing better than the global average: women make up 35% of CEOs (down 3.5% from last year) and 38.5% of COOs (up 9.3%). Women in South Africa also make up 36.3% of CMOs, a remarkable 52.7% of CFOs and 57.1% of HROs.
Says Dire: “It’s positive that women have consistently been well represented in senior HR positions, it puts them in a position to drive transformation and support the pipeline of female talent. HR leaders can help create a ripple effect across the firms they work in.”
“We are also seeing external pressure for change paying off,” says Dire.
External pressure
Mid-market businesses face significant pressure from external sources to improve their gender diversity. The report notes that more than three-quarters (77.6%) of mid-market businesses say they have had a request from a client, investor, regulator, or another external source to see the gender balance of their senior management team or evidence of a commitment to a gender diversity programme.
And these pressures are powerful drivers of change.
More than half (56.3%) of businesses who have faced this type of pressure say that the percentage of women in their senior management has risen. Among firms that have experienced external pressure, the proportion of women in senior management is higher, at 37.1%, 3.1pp above the global average.
Of South African companies, 86.8% say the gender balance of their senior teams is publicly available, and that a significant amount of pressure is felt from investors, partners, government and regulators, among others, to share diversity figures.
Almost half (49.5%) of South African respondents say the percentage of women in their senior management team has increased in the last 12 months.
And what about that most critical of measures, pay parity?
Pay parity
An important question asked to respondents was which elements of gender equality have made it into company policies. In South Africa, companies are making employee pay, bonuses, promotions, training, senior leadership positions and mentoring part of company policy.
Overall, employee pay is the most frequently cited element for businesses to set both a gender equality strategy and a target for. Globally, among the mid-market, 39.3% of businesses have a gender equality strategy on employee pay with South Africa sitting on 52.7% while globally, 40.3% have a target on equal pay in place and 41.8 for South African firms.
How long will it take?
The report asked respondents how long it would take them to meet current diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) targets. The global response: only 3.3% say they have met their targets, 10% will be there next year, 39.8% say 1-3 years and 30% say 4-5 yrs.
How do South African companies compare: 11% said 1 year, 53% said 1-3 years, 9.9% said “we’ve already met our DEI targets”.
Accelerate action
“Despite South Africa’s leadership in this report, there are many other areas of diversity, equity and inclusion where this country and business in South Africa have gaps to fill. The global figures are a stark reminder of the urgency to address gender inequality everywhere. The next generation of women should not be held back by gender inequities.
“Business must continue to increase the pace towards parity – we owe it to women and to the economies and societies that sustain us.”
The report identifies three key drivers of diversity:
- Be bold, set ambitious targets on senior positions.
- Commit to targets which support every stage of a woman’s career – not just at the leadership level.
- Exert pressure on external partners throughout supply chains to increase the gender balance of their teams.
“Now is the time to keep up the pressure,” concludes Dire. “If we are serious about tackling diversity, we have to work together.”
For more, download the report here.
