Women hold 38% of healthcare CEO roles but chair just 14% of for-profit boards

Women hold 38% of CEO roles across the 198 organisations assessed in the 2026 Global Health 50/50 Report, yet chair only 14% of for-profit boards in the same group, exposing a sharp gap between workplace policy and senior leadership in the healthcare industry.

The report, published by the Global 50/50 think tank, covered pharmaceutical, food and health consultancy companies alongside non-profits. Researchers found that 73% of for-profit organisations maintained a publicly available gender equality policy, compared with 61% of non-profits. That policy lead did not translate upward: 43% of non-profit boards are chaired by women, more than three times the for-profit rate, and not a single pharmaceutical company in the sample had a female CEO.

What did companies gain in the past year?

Progress was uneven. The share of organisations performing at a "high" level or above rose from 38% in the prior index to 45% this year, with non-profits driving most of the improvement. Among non-profits, public commitments to gender equality returned to 86%, the level recorded in 2024. For-profits moved the other way, with commitments falling from 81% in 2024 to 65% in 2026. Global 50/50 attributes the 2025 decline — the first across-the-board drop since the index began in 2017 — to US executive orders pressuring companies to dismantle diversity and inclusion programmes.

How large is the CEO gap, and how long will it take to close?

• Across all 198 organisations, women held 38% of CEO positions.
• For-profit board chair positions held by women: 14%.
• Non-profit board chair positions held by women: 43%.
• Female CEOs at pharmaceutical companies in the sample: zero.
• Projected year for CEO gender parity at current rates of progress: 2039.

Does leadership affect the gender pay gap?

In a separate cut of 45 UK-based companies, Global 50/50 found that organisations led by a female CEO reported smaller median gender pay gaps than those led by men, suggesting boardroom composition shapes outcomes on payroll as well as on policy text.

What do the report's authors say?

Dr Lynsey Robinson, health lead at Global 50/50, framed the disconnect bluntly: "Among the organisations we assess, companies lead on workplace policy, then fall away the moment the questions turn to power and purpose. A policy on paper isn't power in practice. Companies have shown they can write the policies. Now they need to share the power."

Co-CEO Professor Sarah Hawkes pointed to the political backdrop: "We're in a landscape without precedent, with gender equality under organised attack. Yet some organisations that dropped commitments under that pressure have put them back. Commitments survive when they're defended — by the organisations that make them, and by everyone with the power to hold them to account."

What does it mean for individual careers?

For professionals charting a path into healthcare leadership, the data point to a sector that recruits and promotes women into mid-level roles faster than it installs them in top jobs. The for-profit pharma segment, where the index recorded no female CEOs at all, signals a particularly narrow funnel for executive-track candidates. UK employees watching the gender pay gap can note the report's finding that female-CEO organisations posted smaller median gaps — a pattern that may make employer leadership composition a more concrete factor in job selection than corporate policy statements alone.

Global 50/50's next index, due in 2027, will test whether the rebound in non-profit commitments holds and whether for-profit boards begin to close the 29-point gap in chair representation that separates them from their non-profit peers.