What’s in a name? Currently, if yours is Charlotte or Emma and you’re an aspiring CFO, it signals you’re in for what is still a relatively rare climb.

A recent review of FTSE 100 Index company C-suite executives profiled by online fintech platform Vestd found that the most common CFO first names were Paul or Michael. For chief executives it was David, and for chief technology officers it was Mark. In fact, among executive roles surveyed, only chief people officers had traditionally female names, according to the study. 

Despite gains in recent years of more women holding corporate leadership roles, at the current rate of female CFO appointments it would take nearly nine years to reach gender parity with regard to equal representation, Vestd CEO Ifty Nasir’s estimated in an emailed statement.

There are also some signs that women’s progress with regard to gains in representation in the top financial leadership post is paused or even reversed. For the first time since at least 2020, researchers last year saw a global drop in the percentage of women in the CFO role, according to MSCI’s Women on Boards and Beyond report, which assesses the global state of women’s representation on corporate boards and in other corporate leadership positions.

Anomaly or deeper shift?

According to MSCI, a New York City-based finance company formerly known as Morgan Stanley Capital International, the percentage of women CFOs fell to 19.4% last year from 21.3% in 2023, although that’s still above the 18.7% seen in 2020. MSCI points to changes in both U.S. and emerging markets as drivers of the drop.

“The past several years had seen significant numbers of women appointed to the role of CFO at [emerging market] companies, outstripping an increase among [developed market] peers,” the report states. “That trend reversed in 2024, though it remains to be seen whether this was an anomaly or the start of a deeper shift.”

A slight dip in the number of women in the finance chief role was also tracked by a different survey in the first half of this year: women held 17.5% of CFO roles at Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies at the end of June, roughly flat or slightly down from 17.6% in the year-earlier study though still above the 12.2% share they held in 2015, according to the most recent Volatility Report from Crist Kolder Associates, an executive search firm.   

The current political climate has also darkened in the U.S. for direct corporate initiatives aimed at evening the playing field for women. President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order directed heads of federal agencies to target private sector diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision outlawing affirmative action have led a surge of companies to roll back their DEI programs or adjust how they communicate around the issues, CFO Dive sister publication ESG Dive reported in August.    

The churn rate, which tracks the amount of time that executives stay in a role, is also a concern when it comes to female finance chiefs. Women CFOs clocked the shortest average tenure of any gender in any executive role at only two years, according to Vestd’s review, which looked at data over the past five years to make its assessment. The average tenure of female CFOs, who accounted for 25.3% of those in the role at the FTSE100 companies reviewed, was less than half that of male CFOs, whose average time in the finance chief clocked in at four years and six months. 

Uneven trajectory

Women remain relative minorities in financial leadership roles even as multiple studies have shown that appointing a woman to the CFO role often leads to higher profitability and stock returns. 

A recent joint study from Catalyst, an international nonprofit that advocates workplace inclusion for women, and the NYU School of Law’s Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, shows evidence that firm leaders understand the corporate risks of scaling back DEI initiatives and may be reluctant to do so, though they may be calling their diversity initiatives by a different name.

More than three-quarters (78%) of C-suite executives are rebranding DEI efforts as “employee engagement,” “workplace culture,” “belonging,” or “fairness,” according to the report, Risks of Retreat: The Enduring Inclusion Imperative, a workplace inclusion survey published after U.S. federal executive orders slammed DEI. What’s more, 77% of chief executives say DEI programs are positively correlated with improved financial performance.

It’s notable too, that a number of major companies, particularly in the tech sector, have recently chosen women finance leaders. Just last year ChatGPT-owner OpenAI appointed Sarah Friar CFO, Alphabet picked Anat Ashkenazi to succeed Ruth Porat and video conference provider Zoom appointed Michelle Chang to take its finance reins. They join a slowly growing cohort that includes such executives as Natasha Fernandes, who has been CFO at IMAX since 2022. 

Whether market and policy shifts and structural gender bias equate to a move away from greater female representation in the CFO seat over the next several years is unclear. Historically, women’s gains in corporate halls of power hasn’t historically been a straight one.

“We’ve seen the number of women CEOs and C-suite leaders fall, rise, then fall again before,” Catalyst Director of Community Growth Andrew Grissom said in an email. “The leadership pipeline narrows significantly at this level leading to a small candidate pool–the effect: any decrease can feel like a huge downturn. The reality is that women are less likely to reach the CFO position or other senior roles focused on P&L in the first place.”

There are, however, concrete steps that companies can continue to take to get to gender parity sooner. Those include, “providing sponsorship and mentorship, ensuring affordable childcare, offering flexibility and promoting what we call gender partnership — when colleagues across genders work together and share responsibility to build workplace change,” Grissom said. “These are critical for women to show up, stay in, and advance in the workplace.”