Women Who Lead: Honouring Their Rise This Women's Day

The numbers show the shift. Across the JSE Top 40, women held 38% of board seats and 27.4% of executive roles in the 2025 financial year, both up around three percentage points in a single year. Across the 50 largest JSE-listed companies, women now make up 37% of all directors, and 60% of those boards include at least one woman in a top executive seat such as chair, CEO or CFO.

On several measures South Africa runs ahead of the global average, where women make up about 44% of the workforce and hold around 31% of leadership roles. The distance left to close is real, and so is the momentum. The direction of travel is clear, and it has been for some time now.

Behind the numbers are women doing the job.

In April 2026, Valdene Reddy became Group CEO of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the third woman to lead Africa's largest exchange. She took over from Dr Leila Fourie, who over nearly seven years steered the JSE to its first ever profit above R1 billion and roughly doubled its equity market capitalisation. One woman handing the leadership of a 138-year-old institution to another says a great deal about how far the ground has shifted.

The pattern repeats globally. Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the economist and former finance minister, became the first woman and the first African to lead the World Trade Organization in 2021, and began a second four-year term in September 2025. In global finance, Jane Fraser has led Citigroup since 2021 as the first woman to run a major Wall Street bank, and in 2025 she was elected its chair as well. Different countries, different sectors, one clear through-line.

The case for women in leadership is not only about fairness. Research consistently links greater board diversity with stronger decision-making, better governance and improved long-term performance. Mixed leadership teams tend to weigh up more perspectives, test assumptions more openly and sidestep the blind spots that come from a room full of people who think alike.

For any business, that is a competitive point rather than a soft one. Broadening who sits at the table tends to make the table work better, and the companies leading on gender balance are increasingly the ones setting the pace in their sectors.

Honouring women in leadership is not only about the names at the very top. It is about the first-time director finding her feet, the founder building something from nothing, and the manager who was the only woman in the room and decided to stay. Every percentage point of progress is made of individual women choosing to lead, often without much of a map.

This Women's Day, that is worth celebrating, and worth building on. The most meaningful tribute is a practical one: making room for the women rising through the ranks right now, and backing them to go all the way.

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Women Who Lead: Honouring Their Rise This Women's Day