Women Losing Ground in Leadership: Why Business Should Worry

The Short Read

New Grant Thornton research shows that women now hold 31% of senior leadership roles in the US, down from 34% in 2025 and 35% in 2024.
Globally, women hold 32.9% of senior management roles, a year-on-year decline of 1.1 percentage points. In India, the figure is nearly 34%, down 2.6 percentage points.
The issue is no longer limited to entry-level hiring. Women are losing ground closer to power, where succession, profit-and-loss roles, sponsorship and enterprise decision-making are shaped.
Organisations need to treat this as a business signal. Women need visibility, sponsors, strategic roles and negotiation discipline. Companies need measurable succession pathways, not loose inclusion intent.

Women losing ground in leadership: A business warning

The phrase women losing ground in leadership sounds like a setback from another era. Yet the latest numbers suggest that progress at the top of business is more fragile than many companies would like to admit.

Grant Thornton’s Women in Business 2026 research shows that women’s representation in senior leadership among US companies has fallen from 35% to 31% in two years. The same report says gender-balanced leadership teams are more likely to report stronger revenue and workforce growth. That makes the decline more than a representation problem. It is a business performance concern.

The global picture is also uncomfortable. Grant Thornton Bharat’s India note on the same research finds that women now hold 32.9% of senior management roles globally. That is down 1.1 percentage points year-on-year. India mirrors the trend, with women holding nearly 34% of senior leadership roles, down 2.6 percentage points.

It is the kind of finding that deserves a slower reading. Women have entered companies, built credentials, led teams, joined boards and become visible in corporate storytelling. Still, the closer one gets to executive authority, the more uneven the road becomes.

A recent article on Women CEOs in India examined the narrow route to the corner office and why many women who reach the top often come through promoter-led pathways. The Grant Thornton findings extend that concern beyond India. The pattern is global: women are present in the leadership conversation, but their hold on actual power remains vulnerable.

The numbers show a leadership pipeline that is leaking near the top

There was a time when companies could explain low senior representation by pointing to a smaller entry-level pool. That explanation is wearing thin.

Women are educated, employed, ambitious and visible across sectors. The World Economic Forum has also noted a sharp “drop-to-the-top”:

Women make up 41.2% of workers globally but only 28.1% of leaders. Its January 2026 analysis said women’s share of new senior leadership appointments peaked at 34.8% in 2022 and then declined for three consecutive years, reaching 32.8% in the first quarter of 2025.

The 2026 World Economic Forum report, in collaboration with LinkedIn and Egon Zehnder, adds another layer. Boards have become more gender-diverse in visible terms, with women holding 29.3% of board seats across the largest publicly traded companies. Yet women hold only one in ten executive board roles and around 5% of board chair positions.

That is where the story becomes sharper. Representation has improved in some rooms, but influence has not travelled evenly. Women may be invited into leadership structures without being placed in the roles that control capital, succession, commercial direction and organisational risk.

Grant Thornton’s US findings say women are more concentrated in functional roles such as HR and marketing. They are underrepresented in CEO, chief commercial officer, partner, and chairperson roles. That distinction is critical. A woman in leadership is a positive signal. A woman in an enterprise decision-making role changes who gets trusted with the company’s future.

This connects with another Change in Content piece on women CEOs and boardroom diversity, where succession planning emerged as a central issue. Companies cannot discover women leaders at the final stage of CEO selection. They have to build their access to commercial, strategic and operational authority much earlier.

Why are women losing ground?

Several forces are shaping the decline at once.

The first is sponsorship

McKinsey and LeanIn.Org’s Women in the Workplace 2025 report found that women receive less career support and fewer opportunities to advance. The report also found that when women and men receive similar levels of support from managers and senior colleagues, the gap in desire for promotion falls away.

Sponsorship has a visible impact: employees with sponsors were promoted at nearly twice the rate of those without sponsors in the previous two years.

The second is the design of leadership roles

Research by Ingrid Haegele on the “broken rung” found that women were less likely to apply for early-career promotions. Role design itself plays a part. In that study, the issue was linked to the structure of leadership responsibilities, including the burden of managing teams, rather than simple explanations such as confidence or capability.

The third is the glass cliff

Michelle Ryan and Alexander Haslam’s original research argued that women who achieve high-profile positions are often more likely to be placed in risky or precarious leadership roles. In today’s business environment, where companies are dealing with AI disruption, tighter funding, restructuring, slower hiring and public scrutiny, risky appointments can become career traps. Women may finally be handed authority when the chances of success are already constrained.

The fourth is a weakening of focused gender advancement

McKinsey and LeanIn.Org found that only about half of the surveyed companies prioritised women’s career advancement, despite broader stated commitments to inclusion. The report also notes that some companies have scaled back programmes such as formal sponsorship, targeted career development and remote or flexible work options.

That last point is important for India as well. Grant Thornton Bharat says 97.7% of Indian mid-market firms have DE&I initiatives in place. Moreover, 77.1% are committed to gender equality initiatives. At the same time, 17.5% of Indian mid-market firms had either relaxed or planned to relax gender equality initiatives, mainly around recruitment and executive pay.

Companies may still be speaking the language of inclusion. The harder test is whether they are protecting the systems that move women into power.

Women losing ground in leadership: What this means for the business ecosystem

When women’s leadership gains weaken, businesses lose more than diversity optics. Grant Thornton’s research links gender-balanced leadership to stronger decision-making, innovation, and growth.

In the US, 22% of companies reported improved financial performance linked to gender equality strategies. It is higher than the global figure of 19%. The same research found that 36% of US companies reported that investors had asked for evidence of senior management gender balance or a commitment to improving it.

In India, the investor signal appears even stronger. Grant Thornton Bharat says 40.6% of Indian mid-market firms reported that potential investors had asked to see the gender balance of senior management and evidence of commitment to gender diversity programmes.

That means women’s leadership is becoming part of how companies are assessed for credibility, governance and future readiness. A leadership team that keeps losing women sends a message to investors, employees and candidates. It suggests that the company may be hiring women, but failing to retain, promote or trust them at the level where direction is set.

It also affects younger employees. Grant Thornton Bharat notes that the new generation of employees wants visible female role models and assurance that progression opportunities are real. If women look up and see leadership thinning out, the message is absorbed quickly. Ambition does not disappear in a vacuum. It weakens when the route ahead looks costly, lonely or politically closed.

A previous Change in Content article on the top 10 women employers in India showed that large-scale hiring of women is possible. The next question for Indian business is whether large employers can convert women’s presence into power across roles, regions and functions.

What can women do differently?

The burden of addressing leadership inequality cannot fall solely on women. Still, women navigating this moment need sharper career tactics because informal systems often reward those who know how power moves.

The first move is to seek sponsorship, not only mentorship

Mentors advise. Sponsors speak in rooms where promotions, stretch roles and succession lists are discussed. Women should identify senior leaders who understand their work, know their ambition and are willing to advocate for them when they are absent.

The second move is to enter roles that carry business weight

HR, communications, marketing and people-facing roles are valuable, but companies often choose CEOs and business heads from profit-and-loss, operations, sales, finance, product and strategy tracks. Women who want enterprise leadership should ask early: Which roles in this organisation lead to the top?

The third move is to make achievements visible without waiting to be noticed

That means documenting revenue impact, team outcomes, risk handled, processes improved, clients retained, costs saved and markets expanded. Women are often judged through behaviour and style. Hard evidence creates a stronger case.

The fourth move is to evaluate risky opportunities with care

A turnaround role can build reputation, but only when authority, resources, timelines and board support are real. Before accepting a high-pressure leadership role, women should ask what success will be measured against, who controls the budget, what decisions they can make, and whether the previous leader was given the same conditions.

The fifth move is to build external visibility

Speaking, writing, industry networks, board-readiness programmes and professional communities can widen opportunities. Internal excellence helps, but external credibility can protect a career when internal politics becomes narrow.

What organisations need to do now

Companies need to move from intent to infrastructure.

IMD’s 2026 report on why leadership systems fail women argues that women’s representation in executive roles had dropped below 31% as of 2026. It links the decline to system design failures, including restricted feeder-role pathways, outdated succession processes, and inconsistent sponsorship.

The practical fix begins with succession.

Every senior role should have gender-balanced succession slates, reviewed by the executive committee and the board. If the slate is all male, that should trigger a governance conversation, not a shrug.

Second, companies should map feeder roles.

Which roles lead to CEO, COO, business head, country head or board positions?
How many women are entering those roles?
How many are leaving?
How many are being sponsored?

Without this map, leadership development remains vague.

Third, sponsorship should become a leadership responsibility.

Senior leaders should be evaluated on whether they develop talent beyond familiar circles. A manager who produces no women successors over several years should have to explain the gap.

Fourth, companies should audit promotion criteria for hidden penalties.

Availability, travel, relocation, after-hours visibility, informal bonding, and “leadership presence” often carry gendered assumptions. Clearer criteria reduce dependence on comfort, similarity and private networks.

Fifth, organisations should retain flexibility where performance allows it.

Flexible work is not a woman’s perk. It is a talent strategy. When companies remove flexibility without redesigning care support, commute expectations or meeting cultures, women often pay the higher career cost.

Sixth, boards should ask sharper questions.

How many women are in profit-and-loss roles?
How many are on succession lists?
How many women left after reaching the senior manager, director, or vice-president level?
How many high-potential women have executive sponsors?

These answers reveal more than a single diversity percentage.

The Change in Content View

Women’s leadership progress cannot be treated as a permanent gain. The latest research shows that gains can slip when systems are left unattended.

For businesses, this is a warning about succession risk.
For women, it is a reminder to pursue power with strategy, visibility and sharper negotiation.
For organisations, it is a call to build leadership systems that do not depend on exceptional women surviving difficult odds.

The business ecosystem does not need more ceremonial inclusion. It needs women in the rooms where capital is allocated, markets are chosen, risks are priced, people are promoted, and the future is decided.

That is where leadership becomes real.

Editorial Note and Sources

This article uses publicly available research and institutional reports to examine why women are losing ground in leadership, focusing on Grant Thornton’s Women in Business 2026 findings. The Forbes article shared as topic inspiration has not been cited or used as a source. The analysis is editorial in nature and should be read as workplace and business commentary, not legal, investment or HR compliance advice.

Sources used:

Women Losing Ground in Leadership: Why the Slide Should Worry Business

New research shows that women’s leadership gains are beginning to slip. The decline is small enough to be ignored by complacent companies, but serious enough to expose where succession, sponsorship and power still fail women.