The proportion of female business leaders is gradually increasing in France
Bulletin No. 257, article 1. The proportion of female French business leaders has gradually increased, reaching 25% in 2023. Thanks in particular to legislative progress, France now leads OECD countries in terms of the number of women sitting on the boards of directors and supervisory boards of listed groups. However, women tend to head up small structures and are largely excluded from certain sectors (particularly construction and transport). The under-representation of women within the ranks of business leaders is due in particular to family constraints, which continue to weigh more heavily on their professional careers.
1 Female representation within the ranks of business leaders is progressing, however the imbalance persists
In 2023, women accounted for over half the French population (52%) and almost half the labour force (49%), but only 25% of usiness leaders (i.e. corporate officers, see Appendix 1). This figure actually drops to 17% in the largest corporate structures (i.e. in intermediate sized enterprises (ISEs) and larger enterprises (LEs)), compared with 26% in micro enterprises and 19% in other SMEs (see Chart 1).
In practice, a company may have one or several leaders. When it is run by a single person, the person is a woman in 22% of cases (see Chart 2). When it is run by more than one person, the top executives are all female in 6% of cases, all male in 41% of cases, and most often mixed (53% of cases).
Over the past twenty years, there has been an increase in the number of women in top executive positions, particularly in ISEs and LEs, where women only occupied around 5% of leadership positions at the beginning of the 21st century (see Chart 1). Nevertheless, progress remains relatively slow and at the current rate, it will take many years before gender parity is achieved.
The gender imbalance is also very pronounced in listed companies. In 2022, 18% of chairperson and CEO positions were occupied by women in SBF 120 companies (compared with 7% in 2017, see Chart 3 below). If we just take the largest CAC 40 groups (a sub section of the SBF 120), the trend towards more female business leaders is still in its infancy. According to a census conducted by Ferrary (2024), women occupied a mere 6.25% of chairperson and CEO positions in CAC 40 companies in 2023 (compared with 3.75% in 2022 and 2.5% in 2021).
In recent years however, legislation has sought to encourage the appointment of more women to the governance bodies of large companies. The Copé Zimmermann Act of 2011 introduced female quotas for…
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Updated on the 28th of April 2025