Since 1911, International Women’s Day has championed women’s rights in every area of society, including the arts, healthcare, sports, technology, and the workplace. The ultimate goal? To bring an end to bias, stereotypes, and discrimination to create true gender equality. At the current pace of progress, the World Economic Forum estimates it will take until 2158 to reach full gender parity in the dimensions of economic participation and opportunity, education, health, and political empowerment, highlighting the urgent need for International Women’s Day 2025’s theme: #AccelerateAction.
Fortunately, the business community remains more dedicated to the movement than ever. Even amid the trend of cultural regression, leaders reaffirmed their commitment to gender parity at the annual WEF Davos meeting in January. The champions for gender equality comprise both men and women decision makers, working across every industry to close the gender gap, either as a personal mission, or recognizing the business case for equality in their company’s bottom-line strategy.
“Gender-diverse companies are almost 17% more profitable than other companies, and there’s a strong correlation between high-performing companies and female representation at the top.”
Michelle Hay, Director of American HR at A.T. Kearney
Aligned with International Women’s Day, Altrata conducted an analysis of 400 C-suite executives who have a strategic priority around advancing women in the workplace. Using our Boardroom Insiders database, we identified both male and female executives who have personal interests in the following categories: Women in Business, Women in STEM, and Women’s Issues.
The leaders identified in this BI PRO project included executives from Barclays, Visa, LVMH, Deloitte, Fidelity, Dell, Google, and many more.
For organizations trying to engage these executives, understanding their strategic priorities regarding topics such as gender equality can help them to tailor their messaging to align with those values and foster a deeper connection.
Women in leadership by the numbers
Women have made incredible strides in the business world thanks in no small part to the gender equality movement. Even though more progress is needed, women now hold leadership in major corporations across the globe.
Altrata, a leading platform for executive intelligence, captured many of these advancements in their 2024 Global Gender Diversity Report. Built on insights from their proprietary Global Leadership Database, the report found:
- Women now account for 32% of board members at the corporations in the Global 20 (the top 20 countries with the largest economies)
- 22% of Global 20 C-suite positions at large, listed companies are occupied by women
- Women hold about 20% of CEO, CFO and COO positions among companies in the US S&P 500
- 6.5% of CEOs are female in Global 20 countries
The 2024 report tracks substantial improvement from numbers just a few years ago. In contrast, Altrata’s 2022 Gender Diversity Report found that:
- Women were only 28.2% of board members at the corporations in the Global 20
- 19.2% of all C-suite executives across the globe were women
- Women only accounted for 5% of the global CEO population
“While progress has been made to increase female representation in the tech industry, there is still much more to be done. It’s not only about increasing the number of women entering the tech workforce but also ensuring their sustained growth and leadership within the industry. This means providing mentorship programs and championing workplace policies that support work-life balance. To bring about lasting change, tech leaders need to amplify their commitment to diversity as a fundamental value.”
Anna Minooka, CMO of Synopsys
In spite of these improvements, full gender parity at the executive and boardroom levels remains a distant goal—even as companies maintain commitment to the mission. In keeping with the International Women’s Day 2025 theme, leaders are expected to focus more aggressively on closing the gender gap as top-level business priority, potentially investing significant resources into the effort. Sales and marketing professionals trying to reach these leaders should take note.
Getting to know the leaders of change
Advancing women in leadership isn’t just a movement championed by women already in power—there’s a diverse coalition of executives (men and women alike) dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion across every industry. For years, thought leaders have raised awareness around the lack of women in leadership, the cause of this disparity, as well as the negative impact it can have on business performance. Nonprofits and advocacy organizations, including National Women’s Day, have played a significant role in all of these efforts.
“Today, I see women supporting each other. We tend to support each other more and more, we exchange a lot. We have created a network not only in the advertising market, but also in the finance, engineering and agriculture markets. They are very strong presences in several segments that have sought to multiply the empowerment and engagement of women as leaders.”
Nathalia Garcia, Director of Marketing at Banco Bradesco
LeanIn.org has been empowering women in the workforce and their allies alike for over a decade, facilitating focus groups and collaborations to drive real change. Similarly, the United Nations’ HeForShe Initiative has rallied men in positions of power across the globe to move toward gender parity in their organizations. Another organization, CEO Action for Inclusion and Diversity, has obtained commitments from over 2,000 CEOs—many of whom are men—to advance diversity and inclusion, including gender parity, in their companies.
“…In order to promote women in IT, supportive allies are necessary – so-called allies. Why all this? Because only 18% of employees in the IT industry are women. But in order to successfully shape the digital transformation, we need the whole of society. Different perspectives create creativity, one of the most important elements for innovation! Men also play a central role in this campaign—as drivers, supporters on an equal footing and as loud voices for more equal opportunities…”
Michael Müller, CIO of Ottoposted [Translated from German]
Sales and marketing professionals who can identify and engage leads on the increasingly important issue of gender parity and women in leadership will enjoy a significant competitive advantage, demonstrating a deep understanding of their customers’ priorities. However, this level of engagement requires more than surface-level knowledge—it demands in-depth research into networks, affiliations, business priorities, and even personal interests.
The power of executive intelligence
Having insight into an executive’s main business and strategic priorities is critical to identifying strong leads, as well as tailoring messaging to their needs and interests. This approach is even more impactful when you can speak directly to their personal values. Aligning a campaign with what they care about —including women in leadership and gender parity—allows you to move beyond more transactional conversations and build genuine trust and connection. Knowing that empowering female leaders is a strategic focus allows you to have a deeper conversation about it with them.
“Gender parity in tech…[is] a personal passion. It’s something that is of professional importance to me as a woman in tech. I also have a passion to grow the community of women and underrepresented minorities in tech, because I think that’s a social good. More importantly, I think it’s imperative for the successful use of our technology to solve society’s most challenging problems.”
Kara Sprague, HackerOne CEO
This type of value-driven engagement is well known in the nonprofit world, but it can deepen marketing and sales relationships in every industry. Speaking to the heart of what leaders and decision makers are passionate about not only differentiates your pitch, but positions you as a partner who truly understands and supports their vision, laying the groundwork for stronger long-term relationships.
Gaining deeper executive leadership insights
Understanding business leaders and their interests—particularly priorities around gender parity—requires labor-intensive media monitoring and deep-dive research. The payoff is the ability to craft highly personalized, value-driven conversations that resonate and drive results, but how can you gain actionable insights about your leads without straining sales and marketing resources?
Altrata is a global leader in executive intelligence and professional relationship mapping, providing a suite of solutions to deepen understanding of key decision makers and improve engagement. The database hosts a wealth of knowledge about influential individuals, making it possible to identify leaders with specific interests—even as niche as gender parity.
What’s more, users can find other characteristics common among a particular audience, widening possibilities for highly personalized engagement.
Among the group of 400 executives that Altrata analyzed, mentoring, volunteering, and diversity topped the list among most common interests they have in common. This audience also identifies growth strategy and innovation among their top business priorities for this audience, allowing organizations to incorporate those offerings into their pitch.
Altrata researchers compile treasure troves of valuable data from earning’s call transcripts, interviews, and other in-depth sources, and put all of this information at sales’ and marketings’ fingertips. In fact, all of the International Women’s Day quotes in this article come from Altrata’s comprehensive executive profiles, providing incredible detail not only about them as leaders, but as people.
Want to leverage more executive intelligence in your next campaign? Schedule a demo of Boardroom Insiders today.