Women are gaining positions in leadership positions in Spanish companies listed on the stock market. They do it at a slow but sure pace. At the end of 2025, they reached a representation of 37.71% on the boards of directors of companies listed on the continuous market and 23.59% in senior management, as stated in the XIV Report of prepared by the IESE business school and the Atrevia communication agency and presented this Thursday in Madrid.
If this pace continues (with growth of just 1.67 percentage points), the equity goal (set at 40%) in corporate governing bodies in 2027 reports could be reached, as required by the . “Everything indicates that we are going to have results sooner, after the acceleration that companies that are not in the Ibex have had,” said Asun Soriano, CEO of Atrevia.
A threshold that 65 of the 115 listed companies already meet, that is, 56.5%. . Among them, the most positive evolution is carried out by the members of the selective indicator. In the Ibex 35, eight out of every ten boards of directors are 40% women. Although seven companies are below. Female directors have a participation of 41.93% and the number of organizations where women outnumber men has tripled, according to Nuria Chinchilla, professor at IESE, with Bankinter, Redeia and IAG as protagonists. Inditex and Logista exceed half of the total. The same occurs with 10 other companies outside the selective with a greater presence of female directors: Prisa, Ebro Foods, Cevasa, Dia, Faes Farma, Grenergy, Libertas 7, Línea Directa, Meliá and Realia.
However, there are still companies without a female presence in the governing bodies. They are Nyesa, Pescanova, Soltec and Berkeley. In the Ibex 35, Solaria is the worst positioned, with only 16.6% of female directors. Puig, Naturgy, Indra, Grifols, Ferrovial and Acerinox do not reach 40% either.
With nine female additions in 2025, women have advanced thanks to the reduction of command seats on the boards, which left a total of 29 seats. “Almost all of the chairs that are not being replaced are for male counselors,” the study says.
In 2025, a woman joined the four who presided over an Ibex 35 company. At the head of Grifols, she joined the short list that includes Dolores Dancausa (Bankinter), Ana Botín (Santander), Marta Ortega (Inditex) and Beatriz Corredor (Realia) and in which only Botín appears as executive president. The continuous market has 10 female presidents, in addition to five CEOs and eight vice presidents, according to Atrevia and IESE.
In the management committees is where. “We have a pending issue,” in Soriano’s opinion. In Ibex 35 companies, the average number of women is slightly lower than that of the continuous market as a whole: 23.5% and during the last year it has only experienced “an advance of 0.76 points, that is, nothing,” says Chinchilla. Aena, Enagás, Rovi, Redeia and Inmobiliaria Colonial are the best positioned, as they exceed the parity threshold. Unlike Grifols, which lacks women on its executive committee.
Only 10 of the 115 listed companies reach 40%. On the other hand, Amrest, Berkeley Energía, Cevasa, Edreams, Meliá, Naturhouse and OHLA do not have any women in management. For their part, Renta Corporación, Prisa, Global Dominion, Tubacex and CIE Automotive exceed that 40%.
Inditex dominates the conversation
In this year’s report, Atrevia and IESE have analyzed more than three million publications on social networks and digital media to study the perception of business leadership from a gender perspective. The Ortega family of Inditex, Amancio and Marta, monopolize 16% of the nominal mentions. No one else capitalizes on the leadership conversation. The next manager does not reach 5% of the references.
Although there is no gender gap in the conversation, since men and women are talked about almost equally, what changes is the narrative with which it is linked to both. Male leaders mark the dialogue when it is related to wealth and their ideological position. On the other hand, in the case of women it is when it comes to appointments. One last detail is that the private sphere continues to have gender. Family and conciliation accounts for 20% of the conversations and eight out of 10 mentions are from executives. “Female power appears accompanied by private life and male power by expertise,” the report notes.
