UKSA Case Study | The Leadership Gap

UKSA Case Study · Leadership, Sales and Opportunity

The Leadership Gap

What the underrepresentation of women in sales and executive leadership reveals about merit, opportunity and commercial performance.

Primary issueWomen in sales and executive leadership

Commercial lensMerit, authority, performance and opportunity

Cases consideredAnne Mulcahy, Lisa Su and Denise Coates

AuthorshipWritten by UKSA Insights

Executive Summary

Women are increasingly visible around the boardroom table. They remain considerably less visible in the chief executive’s chair.

The central commercial question is not whether women should be appointed because they are women. It is whether organisations are identifying, developing and listening to the strongest available leaders.

At the end of 2025, women held 35.9% of defined leadership roles across FTSE 350 companies. Yet only 8% of FTSE 350 chief executive positions were held by women. In the United States, women led 55 of the Fortune 500 companies published in June 2025, equivalent to 11%.

Sales shows a similar narrowing of opportunity. Gartner reported that women represented 40% of mid-level B2B sales employees but only 31% of senior-level B2B sales employees. There is no reliable global register of sales directors, so a universal figure would be misleading.

This case study examines the meritocracy argument, the evidence concerning diverse leadership teams, the glass cliff, major corporate turnarounds and the achievements of self-made female founders. It distinguishes clearly between representation, inclusion and commercial performance.

At a Glance

The leadership and ownership picture

35.9%Women in FTSE 350 leadership roles at the end of 2025.Executive committee members and their direct reports.

8%FTSE 350 CEO positions held by women.FTSE Women Leaders Review 2026.

11%Fortune 500 companies led by women when the 2025 list was published.55 of 500 companies.

31%Women among senior-level B2B sales employees.Down from 40% at mid-level.

481Women on Forbes’ 2026 global billionaire list.14% of 3,428 billionaires.

14%Women’s share of the global billionaire population in Forbes’ 2026 ranking.Ownership remains considerably less balanced than population.

88%FTSE 350 companies achieving, or close to achieving, 40% women on boards.At the end of 2025.

39%Women’s appointment rate into FTSE 350 leadership roles.More than six in ten available appointments still went to men.

The United Kingdom has made substantial progress in board representation. At the end of 2025, 88% of FTSE 350 businesses had achieved, or were close to achieving, the target of women holding at least 40% of board positions. Sixty-nine per cent had exceeded the target.

This progress matters. Boards influence governance, executive accountability, risk and long-term strategic direction. However, a board seat is not the same as executive control.

Non-executive directors provide oversight and challenge. Chief executives, chief financial officers, divisional presidents, chief revenue officers and sales directors carry direct responsibility for resources, people and commercial results.

The latest UK figures reveal a marked difference between representation around the boardroom table and representation in the chief executive’s chair. Women held 35.9% of the FTSE 350 leadership population defined by the Review, yet only 8% of FTSE 350 CEO positions.

The result is not simply a representation gap. It is an authority gap.

The sales leadership pipeline

Sales is one of the most important routes into general management. A sales leader is expected to manage targets, forecasts, customers, commercial risk, recruitment and performance. In many organisations, the role includes substantial profit-and-loss responsibility.

Gartner found that women represented 40% of mid-level B2B sales employees but only 31% of senior-level employees. Its research linked part of this decline to restricted advancement opportunities and career roadblocks.

There is no comprehensive international database counting every sales director. Titles vary between businesses and countries, including Sales Director, Vice-President of Sales, Chief Sales Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, Commercial Director, Regional President and Head of Sales.

The most defensible conclusion is therefore narrower: women are substantially represented in sales, but their representation reduces at senior level.

Representation tells us who is present. Inclusion tells us whose judgement can change the decision.

The principle is difficult to dispute. No organisation should appoint a less capable sales director, executive or chief executive to satisfy a superficial target. Leadership roles carry responsibility for employees, customers, investors and commercial outcomes. Competence must remain central.

The weakness lies not in the principle, but in the assumption that merit is always recognised through a perfectly neutral process.

Evidence of merit	How it is usually acquired	Potential opportunity gap
Revenue growth	Ownership of major customers, teams or markets.	Strategic accounts may be distributed through informal trust networks.
Profit-and-loss responsibility	Control of a division, region or operating unit.	Women may be concentrated in functions with fewer direct routes to P&L authority.
Turnaround experience	Leadership of a troubled team or business.	Women may receive the opportunity only after conditions have significantly deteriorated.
Board exposure	Presentation of strategy, results and investment cases.	Visibility may depend on sponsorship by established senior leaders.
International experience	Mobility, overseas assignments and regional leadership.	Career structures may not accommodate differing personal and caring responsibilities.

The final interview may be fair while the route to it was not

Executive candidates are assessed through evidence accumulated over many years. A candidate cannot demonstrate experience they were never given the opportunity to acquire.

This does not mean every appointment of a man is discriminatory or every unsuccessful woman has been treated unfairly. Industry participation, career breaks, mobility, personal choices and occupational preferences may all influence the pipeline.

It is nevertheless possible for an organisation to run an apparently neutral appointment process and receive a predominantly male shortlist because earlier development decisions produced an unequal pool of candidates.

Many studies report that companies with greater leadership diversity outperform less diverse peers. Such findings are commercially interesting, but they do not automatically establish that diversity caused the performance difference.

Strong companies may be better able to attract diverse executives. Well-governed businesses may be both more inclusive and better performing. Larger organisations may possess stronger development systems. Successful sectors may also have more mature talent pipelines.

A 2024 meta-analysis examining female leadership and financial performance found that, after adjusting for publication selection bias, the average estimated financial effect was negligible. The relationship varied according to context and methodology.

That finding prevents the case for inclusion becoming dependent upon a claim the evidence cannot consistently sustain.

The responsible argument is not that appointing women automatically increases profit. It is that businesses should remove unnecessary barriers, develop talent fairly and create decision-making environments capable of using a wider range of relevant experience.

Research Finding

The average relationship between female leadership and financial performance is sensitive to methodology and context.

UKSA Analysis

Diversity may improve the range of questions in the room. Inclusion determines whether those questions affect the decision.

Commercial Caution

Representation should not be presented as a substitute for strategy, execution, capital or leadership competence.

Practical Principle

The objective is a wider and fairer talent pool, not a lower performance standard.

The history of corporate leadership contains numerous women who inherited serious commercial problems. These cases demonstrate that women can lead major turnarounds. They do not prove women are naturally more effective in a crisis.

Research describes the glass cliff as the tendency for women and other underrepresented leaders to be appointed during periods of crisis or poor performance. This can create access to the top role while simultaneously increasing the probability of failure.

A leader appointed during a crisis should not be compared directly with one who inherited a strong balance sheet, growing market and stable organisation.

Corporate turnaround

Anne Mulcahy · Xerox

Mulcahy took control of Xerox in 2001 when the company was close to bankruptcy, heavily indebted and suffering from weakened customer and investor confidence.

Her response combined liquidity management, customer engagement, communication, cost reduction and continued investment in research and development.

The case is significant because a leader with deep sales experience understood that the turnaround could not be managed as a financial exercise alone.

Technology turnaround

Lisa Su · AMD

Lisa Su became AMD’s chief executive in October 2014 after the company had lost competitive ground and reported a net loss for that year.

She refocused AMD on high-performance computing, long-term product architecture and disciplined execution. By 2025, AMD reported record annual revenue of $34.6 billion.

The appropriate conclusion is not that AMD improved because a woman was appointed. It is that an exceptional executive was given the authority to lead.

Analytical caution

The glass cliff

Women may receive leadership opportunities when the organisation has fewer strategic options and a higher probability of failure.

This makes inherited conditions central to any fair evaluation of performance.

Boards should record the state of the team, pipeline, market, balance sheet and customer base at the point of appointment.

Exceptional women do not prove that barriers have disappeared. They prove what can happen when ability is given authority.

Forbes identified 481 women among 3,428 billionaires in its 2026 global ranking. Women therefore represented 14% of the total.

The figure demonstrates both progress and imbalance. It includes founders, investors and heirs, so it should not be treated as a pure measure of entrepreneurship.

Denise Coates and bet365

Denise Coates is the British entrepreneur referred to in the original question. She trained in econometrics, worked in her family’s betting-shop operation and became managing director of a small chain.

In 2000, she acquired the Bet365.com domain. The online business launched in 2001 with financing secured against the family’s betting shops. The company subsequently developed into one of the world’s largest online gambling businesses.

This is a major entrepreneurial achievement involving timing, digital execution, risk and ownership. It is also inseparable from a controversial industry associated with addiction, consumer harm and regulatory scrutiny. A balanced case study must acknowledge both.

Coates’s story demonstrates that women can build and retain control of enterprises at exceptional scale. It does not show that access to finance, networks and ownership opportunities is equally distributed.

Exceptional cases and ordinary opportunity

Building a billion-dollar enterprise generally requires capital, ownership retention, market timing, networks, specialist capability and strategic opportunity.

The existence of highly successful female founders demonstrates possibility. It does not prove that the average woman encounters the same commercial conditions as the average man.

Sales leadership deserves separate consideration because performance is unusually visible. Revenue, conversion, retention, pipeline, forecast accuracy and quota attainment can all be measured.

An inclusive sales culture does not mean avoiding difficult performance conversations. It means ensuring ideas are judged on commercial relevance, account assignments are distributed transparently, promotion criteria are understood and different leadership styles are not judged against one historic stereotype.

The commercial value lies in information quality. Sales teams possess fragmented knowledge. One person may understand procurement. Another may recognise a cultural issue. A third may identify that a proposed solution cannot be implemented.

A leader who hears only the most confident or familiar voices is operating with incomplete intelligence.

Account Allocation

Track who receives strategic accounts, visible customers and high-value territories.

Promotion

Define the evidence required for advancement before individual candidates are discussed.

Sponsorship

Mentoring provides advice. Sponsorship creates access to opportunity and visibility.

Challenge

Representation has limited value when minority voices are present but discouraged from influencing decisions.

Female leaders are often highly visible because they remain unusual. That visibility can create admiration, but also disproportionate scrutiny.

A struggling male chief executive may be treated as an individual who made poor decisions. A struggling female chief executive may be used as evidence in a wider argument about whether women are suited to leadership.

The reverse can also occur. Successful women may be presented as proof that structural barriers no longer exist, despite their exceptional status.

A proper assessment should examine the condition of the organisation when the leader arrived, market changes, available investment, board support, the quality of the inherited team and the time available for recovery.

08 · Questions Every Leader Should Ask

Questions for the boardroom and sales floor

Representation

At which career stage does representation decline?
Are women leaving, failing to apply or being passed over?
How many women hold direct revenue and P&L authority?

Opportunity

Who receives the largest accounts?
Who leads transformations and turnarounds?
Who receives sponsorship and board exposure?

Performance

Are leaders compared against equivalent inherited conditions?
Are different leadership styles judged consistently?
Do inclusion measures connect to operating outcomes?

Culture

Can women challenge senior colleagues without greater reputational penalty?
Do informal networks control access to opportunity?
Are flexible working patterns treated as lower ambition?

Audit the complete leadership pipeline.
Examine representation from sales executive through manager, director, executive committee and chief executive. The point at which representation declines is more useful than the final percentage alone.
Define merit before assessing candidates.
Agree the capabilities, evidence and outcomes required before discussing individual names.
Track access to revenue-building opportunities.
Measure who receives strategic accounts, transformation projects, international assignments and profit-and-loss responsibility.
Introduce structured sponsorship.
Require senior leaders to advocate for high-potential employees whose work they understand, rather than relying on informal familiarity.
Evaluate the inherited position.
When assessing performance, document the state of the team, market, pipeline, customer base and cost structure at the point of appointment.
Protect constructive disagreement.
Create leadership meetings in which challenge is expected before major decisions are approved.
Retain clear performance standards.
Inclusion should improve the quality of leadership selection, not weaken it. Every appointment must still be judged against the commercial requirements of the role.

The strongest case for improving the representation of women in sales and executive leadership is not that women are inherently more ethical, collaborative or commercially capable than men. That argument replaces one stereotype with another.

The stronger case is that talent is widely distributed while opportunity, sponsorship and authority are not always distributed with the same breadth.

Women occupy more board and senior management positions than they did a decade ago. Yet they remain considerably less likely to become chief executives, senior sales leaders or controlling founders.

Some of that gap may reflect personal choice, career history and industry participation. Some reflects the way organisations distribute major accounts, operating assignments, sponsorship and board visibility.

Anne Mulcahy did not help rescue Xerox because she was a woman. Lisa Su did not rebuild AMD because she was a woman. Denise Coates did not create bet365 because she was a woman.

They did so because they possessed judgement, expertise, resilience and commercial ability.

The question for organisations is how many leaders with similar potential remain unheard, undeveloped or outside the room.

That is not simply a diversity question. It is a question of commercial judgement.

UKSA

Written by UKSA InsightsUKSA Case Study · UK Sales Association

Sources and Further Reading

Evidence referenced in this case study

UK leadership representation

The Leadership Gap

Women are increasingly visible around the boardroom table. They remain considerably less visible in the chief executive’s chair.

The leadership and ownership picture

The sales leadership pipeline

The final interview may be fair while the route to it was not

Anne Mulcahy · Xerox

Lisa Su · AMD

The glass cliff

Denise Coates and bet365

Exceptional cases and ordinary opportunity

Questions for the boardroom and sales floor

Representation

Opportunity

Performance

Culture

Evidence referenced in this case study

FTSE Women Leaders Review

FTSE Women Leaders Review 2026

Women CEOs in the Fortune 500

The senior sales leadership gap

Women in the Workplace 2025

The glass cliff

Anne Mulcahy and Xerox

AMD full-year 2025 results

The richest women in the world 2026

Denise Coates

Female leadership and financial performance