Female chief executives face double standards over how their performance is judged to a far greater extent than men, according to new research.

Women CEOs are criticised as either too ambitious and confident, or not confident or ambitious enough, claimed the study by executive recruiter Russell Reynolds Associates (RRA).

Researchers found that women represented just 6% of CEO departures but experienced significantly more discussion (and more negative discussion) when they left a role.

Society often expects women in leadership positions to walk a tightrope between being seen as competent, which requires displaying ambition, and likeable, which often requires downplaying ambition” – Laura Sanderson, RRA

The report – Time to Tell a Different Story – used news coverage to gauge the biases facing women CEOs and consulted experts over how women CEOs are responding in board and investor settings. It analysed more than 20,000 news articles covering almost 750 CEOs in FTSE 100, S&P 500 and Euronext 100 companies. The stories reflected commentary from a broad range of stakeholders, including analysts, shareholders, executives and policymakers, said RRA.

The analysis used machine learning to tag stories according to a series of attributes commonly associated with CEOs. It found that women CEOs were simultaneously described as having too much and not enough of key leadership traits in what represents a double bind.

There was particular focus placed on how ambitious women CEOs appeared to be. Ambition was 73% more likely to be mentioned in discussions of women CEOs, but rarely for the right reasons. Female CEOs were both 2.1 times more likely as men to be described as too ambitious, and 2.1 times more likely to be described as lacking ambition.

Hetty Pye, member of RRA’s board and CEO advisory partners, said: “Behind closed doors women CEOs often tell us that they are held to different standards and experience more intense scrutiny than their peers. News reports provide a fascinating window into how these biases play out in public discourse but make no mistake, they are rooted in our society not the media.”

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A similar pattern can be seen in references to confidence. In the sample, no women CEOs were described as possessing the “right” level of confidence, said researchers. Instead, they were 3.56 times more likely to be described as lacking confidence than men, while men were 1.25 times more likely to be described as having excess confidence.

Laura Sanderson, co-head of Europe, Middle East & India at RRA, said: “Society often expects women in leadership positions to walk a tightrope between being seen as competent, which requires displaying ambition, and likeable, which often requires downplaying ambition. This contributes to women’s sense of ambivalence when it comes to owning up to any aspiration that they may have to take on the CEO role.”

According to RRA’s latest 2024 Global CEO Turnover report, women represented just 11% of total CEO appointments and 6% of CEO departures at the world’s largest listed companies in 2024. Despite this gap, they receive significantly more attention.

Women CEOs receive 1.25 times more mentions than men, while CEO coverage overall is 17 times more likely to mention the words “woman” or “women” than “man” or “men”.

Female CEOs received 1.7 times more attention when they left a role than men. This attention was also skewed in terms of sentiment – while 18% of stories about male CEO departures was negative, 28% of coverage of women CEO departures was.

The research has also found that descriptions of CEOs differed by gender. While men were positioned around their business and industry impact, women’s personal attributes were more frequently under the spotlight. Women CEOs were 27% more likely to be described using people-oriented adjectives than men, while men were 24% more likely to be described for their task-oriented skills.

This pattern is clearest when it comes to innovation and inspiration. Men CEOs were twice as likely to be described as “innovators”, whereas women were 72% more likely to be described as “inspirational”.

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