A homemaker, keeper of the hearth, a muse to poets – but hardly a boss. For centuries, gender stereotypes confined women to narrowly defined social roles, limiting their opportunities regardless of talent or ambition. It was not until the rise of the feminist movement in the late 19th century that women began to gain broader access to education, careers, and positions of influence. Yet despite major progress and the promise of equal opportunity in today’s developed economies, women remain markedly underrepresented in top leadership roles. That, however, may soon begin to change.
Top-down regulations designed to promote women’s advancement in both public and private companies may prove crucial to improving gender balance on corporate boards. Norway has been one of the trailblazers in this area. In 2005, the country introduced mandatory quotas requiring publicly traded companies to ensure that at least 40% of board seats were held by women or men. Since 2024, similar requirements have also applied to selected private-sector companies in Norway. Similar regulations are now being introduced at the level of the European Union.
Adopted in 2022, the Women on Boards Directive requires EU member states to implement legislation aimed at improving gender balance on the boards of publicly listed companies. Under the directive, by 2026 women must hold at least 40% of seats on supervisory boards or 33% on management boards.
Researchers from the Faculty of Management at the University of Warsaw have explored gender diversity in the executive bodies of European companies. Their innovative Gender Board Diversity Dataset (GBDD) – developed by Prof. Joanna Tyrowicz, Sebastian Zalas from the University of Warsaw, together with Hubert Drążkowski from Group for Research in Applied Economics (GRAPE) – was published in 2024 in the prestigious scientific journal Nature (Scientific Data). Covering the past three decades, the dataset offers a broad international perspective on women’s representation on both management and supervisory boards.
A first-of-its-kind database
The Gender Board Diversity Dataset contains information on more than 59 million individuals serving on the management and supervisory boards of 28 million companies across 43 European countries, spanning the years 1985 to 2020. What makes the dataset truly innovative is not only its scale, but also its inclusion of private companies. Until now, similar databases have focused mainly on publicly traded firms, while information on privately held companies has remained limited and difficult to obtain. In the GBDD, publicly listed firms account for just 0.4% of the dataset, with the remaining 99.6% covering private companies – the segment that makes up the vast majority of the economy.
To build the database, the research team drew on data from Orbis, a global database containing information on more than 370 million companies, including details on ownership structures as well as the composition of management and supervisory boards. One of the greatest challenges in analyzing board diversity was determining the gender of the individuals serving in these roles. Because the Orbis database included explicit gender information for only a small share of entries, the researchers relied on linguistic and cultural criteria to infer gender in the vast majority of cases.
The gender gap at the top
What does the data reveal about women’s presence at the highest levels of European companies? As the authors of the study point out, the share of women on corporate boards typically ranges from 10% to 30%, depending on the country and sector. In private companies, women hold between 10% and 30% of board seats, while in publicly traded firms the figure ranges from just 5% to 25%. In many companies, women are absent from leadership altogether – in fact, this is the case in as many as 68% of economic sectors across Europe.
The imbalance is particularly striking in the IT sector, where women account for an average of just 16% of board members. The picture is more encouraging in the education, health, and healthcare (EHC) sector, where women make up an average of 35% of board membership.
The data also reveal clear regional differences in gender representation on corporate boards. Poland ranks in the middle of the European spectrum – behind the Nordic countries, but ahead of the German-speaking economies. The researchers also point to disparities between management and supervisory boards: on average, 74% of companies have no women on their management boards, compared with 62% on supervisory boards.
According to the authors, progress is visible – but it is happening mainly in companies where women are already represented in leadership. While the number of women serving on boards is rising, the number of companies with all-male boards is declining much more slowly. In practice, this means that women are most often joining boards that already include at least one woman. This persistent absence may continue to hinder both diversity and innovation.
Why do we need women on boards?
The publication of the GBDD is only the first step. The researchers emphasize the need for further studies to better understand the causes of gender imbalance in corporate governance across Europe, as well as the effects of greater gender diversity in leadership roles.
“We see the GBDD as a highly versatile tool, especially since it can be linked with other datasets at the same level of aggregation, such as economic indicators. This opens the door to analysing how gender diversity relates to companies’ financial performance, wages, and managerial effectiveness.”says Sebastian Zalas.
The GBDD may also become an important resource for designing policies aimed at breaking the glass ceiling – which, as it turns out, may be far less fragile than the metaphor suggests.
“The GBDD is a valuable resource for policymakers, analysts, and researchers focused on gender equality. It can help researchers identify the factors driving the increase in female board representation and assess the impact of existing policies and regulations, such as gender quotas. Our work gives businesses, governments, and international organizations a clearer understanding of how women’s growing presence in leadership positions influences decision-making, as well as the outcomes of past equality measures. This can support better, evidence-based policymaking in the future,” Zalas emphasizes.
The text was originally published in Polish on the Serwis Naukowy UW website on May 2, 2025. It was updated in April 2026.
