Where women lead, equality follows

Each November, Equal Pay Day marks the day in the year when women in the United Kingdom, on average, stop being paid compared with men. In 2024, that day fell on 20 November1—a sobering reminder that women earned around 89p for every £1 earned by men. Yet amid this ongoing inequity, new analysis offers a glimmer of hope: organisations led by women chief executive officers (CEOs) are associated with smaller gender pay gaps.

The Gender Pay Gap Report 2025 from Global 50/50 is based on eight years of data from 45 UK based global health organisations. It found that on average organisations with a woman CEO had 4.3% smaller median hourly gender pay gaps over this period than organisations led by men.2 Modelling of these trends suggests that organisations led by a woman CEO for at least five of the past eight years are predicted to close their pay gaps four years earlier on average than those led by men.

This correlation suggests that organisations with women leaders may have more inclusive cultures, transparent pay structures, and equitable promotion practices. Or, perhaps more importantly, women leaders may consciously challenge entrenched inequalities that reproduce “sticky floors” and “glass ceilings.”

The UK is among a small group of OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries that have made gender pay gap reporting mandatory—thereby driving transparency and accountability. Since 2017, all employers with more than 250 staff have been legally required to report their pay gaps. This legislation, supported by enforcement, has created an unprecedented public dataset to drive accountability and progress.

Across our sample, the median gender pay gap fell from 15.2% in 2017-18 to 8.7% in 2024-25, which is below the UK average of 13.1%, with nearly four in five organisations reducing their gaps.2 Although transformation takes time, evidence suggests that in countries where mandatory pay gap reporting has been introduced, the pay gap narrows.3 Although the underlying reasons for this are complex, it does indicate that what gets measured gets managed.

Still, progress is uneven. Nearly half the organisations we analysed had pay gaps above the UK average and women remain over-represented in the lowest pay quartile. Pay gaps also widen sharply after age 40, when the unpaid care burden—disproportionately borne by women—takes its toll on career progression.

Gender equality cannot be achieved without also considering race and other intersecting dimensions of inequality. Despite a 2025 consultation on mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting, it remains voluntary in the UK. Only 13 of 45 organisations in our sample report ethnicity pay gaps. Just as we see with gender, mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting can be a key step towards greater equality.

Our findings resonate with the Fawcett Society’s longstanding advocacy for equity in the workplace in the UK and align with evidence from Global Health 50/50’s broader reports tracking gender and power in 200 global health organisations. Across this landscape, men still dominate leadership positions—in 2025 just 22% of CEOs in for-profit companies are women and under-representation of women at senior levels remains a key driver of pay inequality.4 Our sample does not include the global health workforce involved in service delivery—a feminised and underpaid workforce with large pay gaps of around 24% of mean monthly earnings globally.5 Pay gaps do not operate in isolation, they are intertwined with other structural dynamics such as occupational segregation and discrimination.6

While women’s leadership is a critical first step, women leaders are not a monolith, and representation alone does not guarantee commitment to equity, nor should it rest solely with women. Real progress requires a redefinition of organisational structures, values, and policies, fostering inclusive work cultures which are sustained irrespective of who is in charge. As professors Sarah Hawkes and Rama Baru argue, achieving gender equality requires not only smashing glass ceilings, but rebuilding the whole house on a feminist blueprint.7 Feminist leadership offers a route forward. It recognises how power operates, embraces care and inclusion as organisational values, and measures success not just by financial returns but by fairness and wellbeing.

The Global 50/50 report promotes several actions for closing the gender pay gap. Firstly, every government should require large employers to report gender pay data annually. Secondly, accountability reporting should be broadened to include ethnicity, disability, and other intersectional dimensions of inequality. Thirdly, legislation should compel organisations to publish plans with measurable targets for closing pay gaps. Fourthly, boards and governments need to foster feminist leadership through inclusive approaches cognisant of power dynamics. Finally, equality must be embedded in law and culture by enforcing equal pay laws and promoting shared care, flexible work, and transparency.

Governments everywhere must ensure that gender justice is not a privilege of a few, but a standard for all.