A CEO is the highest ranking executive in a company, and their primary role is to ensure the company runs smoothly – this includes making major corporate decisions, managing operations, being the main point of contact for board members and most of the time being the main face of the company.
Oftentimes, the CEO is elected by shareholders and members of the board. For example, Mark Zuckerberg is the CEO of Facebook, and Steve Jobs was the Founder and CEO of Apple – sometimes CEOs of big companies can become famous and have their face in the public eye.
However, a report last year found that less than 5% of women hold CEO positions at companies around the world. The report also found that forward-thinking countries such as Denmark were struggling when it comes to the number of female CEOs, with no women holding the position in leading companies in the country.
With that said, some countries have taken positive steps in improving the number of women in leadership positions. Norway introduced a mandatory quota to hit, whilst Denmark has set targets for the number of women at board level, as well as recruiting policies and developing female managers.
RS Components has researched which countries are leading the way and have the most amount of female CEOs running companies in their country. By a long way the United States takes the lead with 4,490 companies having female CEOs running businesses.
Despite being the second country around the world with the most female CEOs, there is a large gap between the first-ranking country and the second, which is India, which has 1,501 companies lead by women.
Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo and Indian American business executive, has consistently ranked as one of the most powerful women in the world. In 2015, she was ranked as the 2nd most powerful women on the Fortune list. Since then, female CEOs numbers have been continuously growing, although there’s still a long way to go.
In the tech industry specifically, women are largely underrepresented in leadership positions or technical roles. However, there are a number of women leading the way within the tech industry in sectors such as cybersecurity, consumer technology, gaming and artificial intelligence and often have a strong link to STEM.
Many cite education as the reason why women aren’t entering the tech industry in the first instance, and a recent report found that just 27% of women said that they would consider a career within the tech industry, and just 22% of respondents to the survey said that they would be able to name a women in tech.
The countries that are really lacking female CEOs, and only have one recorded company with a female CEO leading the way, are the likes of Paraguay, Montenegro and Belize. For example, Belize has just a 2.27% rate of females leading companies – that equates to one female-lead company out of 44.
To find out the other countries leading the way for women in tech and female tech CEOs RS Components has analyzed data from Crunchbase. Take a look at the map to find out the countries with the highest percentage of female tech CEOs based on the total number of tech companies and the countries with the highest number of female tech CEOs overall. View all the findings here.
Let’s take a look at the countries that have the most female tech CEOs:
