Women CEOs are more often activist targets, study finds
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Illustration: Tiffany Herring/Axios
Shareholder activists are taking aim at more companies — and a disproportionate number of them are led by women, a new report finds.
Why it matters: Women are already underrepresented in the C-Suite, accounting for only 9% of the Fortune 500 CEOs — and being put in the cross-hairs of activist investors may only expand the gender gap.
Driving the news: The Conference Board on Wednesday released a report showing an upswing in efforts by shareholder activists to replace company CEOs.
- Between 2018 and 2025, there have been 127 such campaigns, with their frequency increasing after the pandemic.
Zoom out: The report also indicates that women CEOs receive more than their fair share of attention from activist investors.
- Women CEOs accounted for only 6.3% of the companies in the Russell 3000 stock index from 2018 to 2025 — yet 15.75% of activist campaigns that publicly criticized the company leader were aimed at women CEOs over that period.
Zoom in: Among the examples cited by the Conference Board, as earlier reported by the Financial Times:
- Carl Icahn seeking the removal of Vicki Hollub as CEO of Occidental Petroleum.
- Campaigns in 2021 and 2022 by the advocacy group Majority Action to persuade shareholders to vote against the the reelection of Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good as chairman of the board.
- Those campaigns were unsuccessful.
- More recently, Victoria Secret's CEO Hillary Super has come under pressure from activists this year over her strategy and leadership.
Between the lines: Why are women CEOs overrepresented this way? The Conference Board points to four possible factors:
- Gender-role stereotypes that link leadership behavior to men. Women CEOs, as a result, may be more likely to be put under a microscope and judged more harshly than men.
- The "glass cliff" — businesses with problems may be more willing to recruit or promote women to be CEOs, setting them up for difficult times and the subsequent attention of activist investors.
- Women CEOs may receive less credit than men, the Conference Board said, pointing to a study that found that women face ouster as CEO regardless of their company's performance, while men are less likely to get the ax when their company is going strong.
- "Activists may believe they will find it easier to exert their influence over female CEOs," the report noted.
Reality check: Shareholder activism is still a relatively small universe when it comes to the number of participants.
The bottom line: The perception that women CEOs are being overly targeted may change only when there are more of them.
