Leading the charge: These 25 female-heavy C-suites highlight the dearth of women in Europe’s boardrooms

To build this list, we looked at the fastest-growing companies across all sectors in Europe and selected those with women holding key positions that drove growth and innovation. That includes women working in roles like CEO, COO, and CCO, as well as in more explicitly innovation-oriented positions like chief AI officer, head of technology, or chief digital officer. 

The 25 companies on our list represent standout leaders in a range of sectors, including banking, cybersecurity, and retail, where a focus on equality has helped women move into positions of influence. 

Combined, these 25 companies earned €18.7 billion ($20.5 billion) in profits in 2023. They have also grown revenues at an average rate of more than 50% in the past three years, demonstrating that having smart women at the top pays dividends.

Milena Mondini de Focatiis, CEO of Welsh insurance firm Admiral, is one of the leaders driving that growth. She became the insurer’s first female boss in 2021 and is on track to break the 10 million customer mark, as her group recorded a 31% jump in revenue last year.

Mondini de Focatiis is not alone on this list. Others, including Benedicte Schilbred Fasmer of Norway’s SpareBank 1 and Poppy Gustafsson of U.K. cybersecurity firm Darktrace, have also grown their companies as CEOs.

Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images

But inevitably, our list underscores the relatively small pool of companies with female leadership, and highlights that even when they reach the top, the glass ceiling persists in 2024. At Fortune, we believe in making business better—and as we build on this important list, we will champion more female leaders in the future.

Innovators, led by women:

The inaugural Fortune Leading the Charge list looks at Europe’s fastest-growing companies, and honors those with women in key leadership positions that drive innovation.

“This list screens for Europe-based companies with more than 100 employees, positive net earnings in 2023, three-year compound annual revenue growth rates (2021-2023) in the top decile in their industry, and women in key leadership roles for growth and innovation (e.g., CEO, operations, technology, digital, or innovation). Companies are ranked in order of 2023 net revenue.”

On running to success

Shoemaker On is one of our standout female-driven companies with innovation at its heart. Former triathlete and cofounder Olivier Bernhard would experiment with cut-up pieces of garden hose for the first prototypes of a shoe that could help with injury prevention. 

The retailer hasn’t looked back since its 2010 launch. On has closed the gap with incumbents like Nike and Adidas by achieving average net revenue growth of 62% over the past three years, with sales topping $2 billion last year.

Courtesy of On

The Swiss brand got a major profile boost in 2019 with an investment from tennis legend and countryman Roger Federer. It struck gold when runner Hellen Obiri wore its shoes in her victorious Boston Marathon races.

But it’s On’s female-filled C-suite who can claim credit for the explosive growth enjoyed by the sports brand. Unusually for a company as big as On, women command multiple C-level positions there, including chief operating officer Jiahui Yin; Amanda Regele who heads up digital; and On’s chief commercial officer, Britt Olsen. The company’s leadership team is 45% female.

Such breadth of female influence in the C-suite is rare. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, the share of women at an executive level declined last year for the first time in two decades, making up just 11.8% of the 15,000 C-suite roles it analyzed. 

For On’s Olsen, better representation has been pivotal to the group’s growth, which has helped its valuation double in the first half of 2023 to $12.4 billion. When Olsen joined nearly a decade ago, the running landscape was quite different, and the typical running shoe was a far cry from the sleek, fashionable products you see on shelves today.

“Those were the days when you would walk into a run specialty store and look at a running wall, and it was almost as if everything had to be just incredibly awful-looking and poorly designed in order to be a good running shoe,” she says.

On’s CloudTec product has helped cement its highly recognizable cavernous soles in consumers’ minds, implicitly telling shoppers that running in its shoes is like running on a cloud. “We saw something really unique in innovation and product, and that’s what we stayed focused on,” Olsen says. “There was no way at the time that we could compete with the marketing budgets of other brands.” 

Olsen says On, which now employs around 2,300 people, maintains a startup mentality where moving fast is vital. The voices of Olsen and her female executive peers have helped them make the right decisions as they do so. 

“Generally, I find that females can add a different perspective and oftentimes have a higher EQ, or bring a vulnerability to a conversation and are not afraid to ask questions that sometimes feel scary or that people have a fear around asking,” Olsen says. “So I actually find having a female voice in a room often gets a conversation much further along.”

Not enough companies are following suit

Female-led C-suites are already a rarity, as are women in technical positions. Only 7% of Fortune 500 Europe companies are led by female CEOs, for example. That’s a worse share even than the dismal rate in the U.S., where one in 10 women hold the top job.

Women make up just 8.3% of chief technology officer positions in the U.S., and are still overwhelmingly more likely to reach executive roles in fields like HR, finance, or marketing, according to KPMG.

There is just one female CTO among our top 25 firms, Equinor’s Hege Skryseth. We do spotlight the occasional chief strategy and AI officer, including Darktrace’s Nicole Eagan (a former co-CEO with Poppy Gustafsson). But typically women who rise to the top are more likely to occupy positions on the commercial or operational side.

Reflecting on these challenges, Olsen tells Fortune: “You can’t be what you can’t see, so representation matters.” 

This article appears in the Europe edition of the August/September 2024 issue of Fortune with the headline, “Leading the charge: Spotlighting the 25 companies smashing the glass ceiling.”