Female leaders are increasingly landing roles that traditionally serve as launchpads to the corner office. A record 11% of Fortune 500 companies are now led by women. But behind that milestone lies a more sobering truth: Women still face a steeper climb to the top, often required to take more steps and log more experience than their male counterparts to be seen as ready.
According to a 2025 Women’s Power Gap CEO Report from the Eos Foundation, a philanthropic organization focused on advancing gender and racial equity in leadership, women in the S&P 100 now hold 24% of the most common “launchpad” roles for CEOs, including chief operating officer, president, and division head. Yet they account for just 8% of CEO appointments from those positions.
This gap is not due to a lack of qualifications. The data shows that women are equally, if not more, capable than male CEO candidates. In fact, 32% of women CEOs took an additional step as president before being elevated to the CEO seat.
“We can only surmise that there’s bias in that final selection process,” Andrea Silbert, president of the Eos Foundation, tells Fortune.
Silbert explains that unconscious bias can emerge both before and during the CEO selection process, often in subtle but consequential ways. One telling example is the unspoken expectation that women must prove themselves in an additional proving ground—typically as president—before being deemed CEO-ready. This extra step, she notes, serves as a form of risk mitigation that is rarely required of men, reinforcing the notion that women must be overprepared to be considered equally qualified.
During the actual selection process, gendered assumptions about leadership can further place women candidates at a disadvantage. “We’ve heard, ‘He has more potential.’ We’ve heard, ‘She doesn’t have executive presence.’ At the worst end of things, we’ve heard of women told that they are shrill,” Silbert says.
The structure of the C-suite also plays a role. While women are increasingly making inroads into the C-suite, they remain concentrated in roles that rarely lead to the very top, such as chief human resources officer, chief marketing officer, and chief sustainability officer. Women occupy 76% of CHRO positions and 56% of CMO roles, according to the report.
By contrast, roles with direct financial and operational oversight remain a more straightforward path to the CEO seat. While women are often siloed into non-P&L-facing functions, they still hold 19% of CFO roles—a position long seen as a primary gateway to CEO. The CFO-to-CEO pipeline is more common among women than men: 10% of women CEOs followed that path, compared to just 6% of men.
Ultimately, for women aspiring to be CEOs, the data indicate a higher likelihood of success for those with extensive P&L experience.
“Even the women who made it to CEO through the CFO route had, in many cases, held a prior P&L role. It’s another way that the companies assure that the woman has that rounded experience [and] that they are 110% qualified for the job when they’re being appointed,” says Magdalena Punty, the Eos Foundation’s director of research.
For aspiring women CEOs, Silbert and Punty’s advice is clear: pursue P&L roles early, be vocal about your ambitions, and approach your career with intentionality.
“You can’t just keep your head down and work hard,” says Silbert. “You need to build your brand, network, and have coffee with the right people. A friend of mine used to say, ‘It’s a campaign to break the glass ceiling.’”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
