Women Hold Only 14% Board Seats in Mexico in 2025: Report

• According to an IMCO study, women would only hold 14% of board seats in Mexico by 2025
• Mexico ranks below Colombia, Brazil, and Chile in terms of gender equality at work
• The findings emerge from the Women in Companies report by IMCO and Kiik Consultores

According to a study carried out by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, IMCO, Women in Mexico will take up only 14 percent of all board seats in 2025.

On the whole, and regionally, the country still falls behind in workplace gender equity, behind the cases of Colombia, Brazil, and Chile, which have better levels of women's participation.

The report Women in Companies elaborated by IMCO in collaboration with Kiik Consultores and in its fifth edition assesses the representation of women in boards and senior management in nearly 200 publicly listed companies.

For the first time, this report also includes the findings from a survey of over 250 companies to measure gender gaps at the state level, in collaboration with Jalisco’s Secretariat of Economic Development.

Compared with 2023 and 2024, IMCO reported a modest 1 percent increase in the number of women in management roles.

At this rate, gender parity on Mexican corporate boards would not be reached until 2043. Although there was a decrease of 5 percent of boards with no women from the previous year, 19% of companies do not have any female board members.

In Jalisco, the ranking of the States with a Gender Lens 2025 places the state at a medium high level due to favorable conditions for women in participating in the labor market.

The state has been showing lower barriers to workforce entry, greater economic autonomy for women, and a strong presence of formal female entrepreneurs.

Participation of women in Jalisco's business sector is nearing parity: four out of every ten businesses have a workforce where women are more than half of the employees. In MSMEs, 47 percent are women business owners, and one in five companies has more than half their executives as women.

For her part, the Minister of Economic Development of Jalisco, Cindy Blanco, emphasized that the entity is setting the pace nationally in the evaluation of gender equity, where 25 percent of major companies and almost 50 percent of small- and medium-sized companies have women holding high-level decision-making jobs.

Still, the study found that there was uneven leadership in the entity in some business areas, such as operations, technology, sales, and more representation in finance, marketing, and human resources.

Other challenges that were noted to limit women's economic participation include a shortage of centers that offer early childhood care and insecurity in public transportation.

The report also reveals other best practices on inclusion, such as flexible working arrangements, pay transparency, and the use of standard procedures in hiring.

The most widespread initiatives on continuous training and development of leadership are at 58 percent. Of the listed companies, 39 percent reported inclusion policies, while 11 percent publish sustainability reports.

On a global scale, Mexico keeps lagging behind. Women occupy 17.5 percent of board seats in the country's largest companies, compared with the OECD average of 32.5 percent in 2024; France and New Zealand each exceed 47 percent. In Latin America, Colombia leads the way with 25 percent, followed by Chile with 24 percent, and then Brazil with 22 percent.