We’d like to start by wishing all of our female followers a Happy International Women’s Day!
We feel it’s important to celebrate the women that make our business a success, while also acknowledging the challenges that women have had to face, and overcome, in both society and professional sectors such as recruitment.
Women in Recruitment: How Are Things Changing?
The number of women working in recruitment has changed drastically over the years, with female representation in recruitment rising to 53% between 2019 and 2025.
While recruitment was formerly known as a ‘boys club’, the majority of workers in the sector are now women, highlighting a shift that we’re increasingly seeing across the wider professional sector. 87% of CEOs recently surveyed are focused on talent diversity, while 78% of large organisations are actively trying to hire more women.
When we see statistics around women-led or women-owned businesses, which typically outperform male-led businesses by 63% in terms of ROI, it’s not surprising that more professional sectors are focused on hiring women into senior positions.
This also gives us a hint at what may happen in the future. At the time of writing, around 5% of CEO positions in recruitment firms are held by women. This is an incredibly small number but it’s rising at a rapid pace, driven by women who are adopting an approach based on personal branding, using it as a way of building authority, developing their network and stepping into the spotlight.
Between changes to business attitudes, new legislation entering into law and women in senior roles consistently outperforming men, we’ll most likely see an uptick in the number of women entering C-suite, MD or company founder positions.
Is the Gender Pay Gap Still Prevalent?
Despite broad pushes towards hiring more women, the gender pay gap remains an ongoing issue.
For every £1 earned by a man in the UK, an equally qualified woman with a similar personal and professional background earns 90p on average. The gap increases as roles become more senior. This only shows that women are still being treated unfairly when it comes to compensation, especially if they don’t initially speak up. Statistics show that women are less likely to negotiate for higher starting pay, or they may face greater penalties for doing so, leading to lower initial pay and, subsequently, lower future pay.
This research also suggests that women are less likely to ask for a pay increase/better pay because they tend to worry more about being perceived as “difficult” or “aggressive” and often feel pressure to be grateful for their employment, whereas men are more likely to push for higher compensation.
At the same time, pre-existing stereotypes can influence hiring managers to favour men for high-paying roles or assume women are less committed to career growth, a prejudice that’s particularly prevalent around women in professional services starting a family. What we’re seeing is that many women are ‘expected’ to work part-time due to having children, which not only limits their career development but obviously impacts their annual salaries.
Obviously, this is a form of bias and while people are aware of it, it’s important that businesses start to make active changes, especially as pay transparency legislation is written into law.
At the same time, because part-time workers tend to earn less per hour, the gender pay gap is considerably larger than the gaps between full-time and part-time workers. This is reinforced by data showing that as of April last year, median pay for all employees was 12.8% lower for women than for men.
It’s at this point that more business managers need to consider their compensation strategy. While not all businesses have the budget to pay more, there’s no harm in providing incentives, bonuses and other employee benefits that help mitigate pay gaps. Employee empathy is a key topic in the current working world and something that all businesses should be considering.
Overall, we feel that International Women’s Day is highly important. It highlights problems that women continue to face in the current professional market, while also celebrating all of the success that women have achieved so far, something that can go a long way to helping break down future barriers. Happy International Women’s Day!