Women Gaining Ground: ON Partners Report Reveals Narrowing Executive Pay Gap and Growing Representation

April 18, 2025 – While the World Economic Forum projects it will take 106 years for women in North America to reach economic parity with men, ON Partners’ annual women’s report offers a data-backed look at gender equity in the executive suite and explores whether progress is accelerating at the top levels of leadership. Drawing on insights from more than 1,000 senior-level executive searches in ON Partners’ proprietary database over the last few years, the findings highlight key compensation trends and shifts in executive representation.

The average total compensation for executive women (VP and up) was $457k compared to executive men’s average of $486k, according to the ON Partners report. The $29k difference comes in lower than last year’s reported difference of $36k. In addition, compensation for both men and women increased in 2024, with women’s compensation increasing at a higher rate than men’s. A notable finding is that while the compensation gap continues to narrow, women come in lower than men on total compensation often due to lower bonuses and sign-on bonuses.

“It is important for women to evaluate their total compensation package, not just their guaranteed base salaries,” said Tara Flickinger, partner at ON Partners. “Companies are unlikely to offer a sign-on bonus unless there is an ask from the candidate in the negotiation process and the same is true on bonus potential. The latter is crucial because asking for an increase in performance-based compensation signals a candidate is betting on herself, which is music to hiring managers’ ears.”

SVP Roles Power the Pipeline

A positive trend is that senior leadership roles (SVP level), which are often a pipeline to the C-suite, show women getting about 25 percent of the placements with total compensation being slightly higher than their male counterparts, the ON Partners’ report found. The base salary for female SVP executives is $311K, while the base salary for male SVP executives is $303K.

“The trendline of more women in pipeline roles is not at all surprising,” said Bryan Buck, managing partner at ON Partners. “The investment in talent development over the last decade is continuing to show exponential returns – not just with more women in positions of leadership today, but in the path they’re creating for the next generation that’s having a compounding effect. Women today aren’t just leading by example, they’re bringing it to life for those who are up next.”

CFOs Close the Gap

The chief financial officer role is one in which women are making strides in compensation. Women are just above 20 percent of CFO placements, and their total compensation is higher with an average of $450k vs. $440k.

Women Lead in Pay Across Top Tech Roles

Women are making strides in tech roles, which have traditionally favored male executives. Among the chief technology officer and chief information technology officer positions ON Partners has placed over the past two years, the top earners have been female executives. Chief product officer compensation is also very comparable between men and women.

Related: Women’s Representation in the C-Suites Declines as Gender Parity Remains Elusive

“The CIO and CTO functions have historically been highly technical, requiring deep engineering expertise, but these roles have evolved,” said Nina McMaster, partner at ON Partners. “Today, these leaders are viewed not just through a technical lens, but as business-critical positions requiring leadership, strategy, communication, and the ability to collaborate across departments. Companies are recognizing that a diverse leadership team brings better decision-making and business outcomes. The result is more negotiating power for women when moving into these positions.”

Is Your Organization Driving Away Top Female Talent? Learn How to Retain Them

Companies risk losing top female leaders at an alarming rate, often due to workplace policies that unintentionally push them out. Sheffield Haworth has identified key factors behind this trend, including limited career advancement, microaggressions, and burnout from unrecognized DEI efforts. Let’s take a closer look!

With a primary focus on technology, consumer, industrial, and the life science sectors, ON Partners recruits C-level and board talent for public and private companies, as well as venture capital and private equity firms. Founded in 2006, the firm’s consultants work from offices in Atlanta; Boston; Chicago; Cleveland; Dallas; Menlo Park, CA; Minneapolis. MN; San Francisco; and New York. ON Partners was named one of the fastest growing search firms this year by Hunt Scanlon Media. The firm is now ranked as one of the 20 largest search firms in the nation.

HR and Diversity Power 70 Recruiting list

ON Partners was recently named to the HR and Diversity Power 70 Recruiting list by Hunt Scanlon Media. The list encompasses the leading executive search firms specializing in human resources and diversity, equity & inclusion. This is the sixth year in a row ON has been placed on this prominent ranking.

Forty-one percent of all search assignments ON has undertaken have resulted in diverse executive placements in the last year. The firm has placed more than 200 diverse executives in leadership positions in the last few years.

In the Executive Search Report published by Hunt Scanlon, ON Partners’ chief product officer, Jin Ro, weighs in on one of the biggest topics surrounding diverse and inclusive executive hiring practices. Generative AI continues to be a key topic of conversation throughout industries and the search industry is no different. While there are plenty of potential applications for this novel technology, using it as a means of promoting diversity at organizations as well as assisting with DEI initiatives more broadly is a widely held belief. Nevertheless, the overarching sentiment is that AI is still a tool so it must be used with awareness and care rather than seen as a solution or a replacement to humans.

AI has become an integral part of our lives, revolutionizing industries and transforming the way we live and work, and the same can be said for the search industry and DEI initiatives within organizations.

“Depending on which side you ask, AI will lead to either a data-driven meritocracy or a DEI crisis,” said Mr. Ro. “In an ideal model, AI provides a wide aperture to a larger and more diverse pool of candidates where the best fit would emerge based solely on merit and fit.”

“Nevertheless some limitations exist with this tool that must be considered when using it,” Ro said. “There are built in social biases. AI models are only as good as its training data. Additionally, there is no recognition of recent events where a situation might require nuance or care. Finally, the internal workings and process are unclear to the user so it is difficult to parse through the source of the output. Nevertheless, AI has incredible potential to help recruiters find a wider pool of talented and qualified talent.”

Related: Executive Women Making Progress Closing Pay Gap

Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief and Dale M. Zupsansky, Executive Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media