Female representation on the boards of Ireland’s largest publicly listed companies is on a steady upwards trajectory, but progress has stalled at leadership level.
For the first time ever, ISEQ 20 companies have achieved 40% female board membership, according to the latest annual report from Balance for Better Business, an independent review group set up by government to improve gender balance in senior leadership in Ireland. This marks a key threshold ahead of the EU’s Women on Boards Directive, which introduces new rules requiring 40% of board members to be women by 2026.
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However, the report also shows the proportion of women on the leadership teams of the ISEQ 20 has dipped, and remained static for all listed companies, suggesting there may be fewer board-ready female candidates in future. One in five (20%) of ISEQ 20 leadership teams are all-male, up from 16% in 2023.
This trend is echoed in research from Grant Thornton, which reveals an increase in the number of businesses in Ireland without any female senior managers at all. The firm’s latest annual Women in Business report found that more than one in seven (16.3%) businesses had no women in senior management roles, up 4.6 percentage points on the year before. A further 13.8% of respondents had just one woman on their senior management team.
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