November 2025 — Women Leading the Way Digest: Meritocracy, Power, and Structural Change

This month's developments in women’s leadership across the finance sector circle back to one central point: meritocracy remains a contested space. New behavioural evidence from the London School of Economics shows how gender still colours performance assessments. 

At the same time, new leadership rankings, board-composition research, and global nomination campaigns show where women already hold influential roles in finance. They document how female leaders shape strategy, capital allocation, and governance across the sector. Let’s take a closer look at what is defining the agenda in November.

When competence is misread

The LSE’s final report from the four-year Accelerating Change Together (ACT) programme delivered one of the sharpest demonstrations of gender bias in financial services to date. In a controlled experiment, finance professionals rated a fictitious “Stephanie” as less competent than an identically performing “Stephen,” with bias particularly pronounced among male evaluators. This underscores an industry-wide problem, where women’s performance is still being judged through assumptions rather than evidence.

ACT’s conclusion unveils that firms need to rebuild the mechanisms that allocate opportunity, visibility, and voice if they want a functioning meritocracy. The report outlines practical steps — structured feedback systems, bias-resistant leadership training, stronger sponsorship networks, and better protection against “groupthink” dynamics. Without these fixes, talent continues to be mispriced.

Women redefining financial leadership

Against this backdrop, 2025’s American Banker’s ranking of the Most Powerful Women in Finance shows how women are already leading at the frontier of market transformation. Highlights include:

• Mary Callahan Erdoes, JPMorgan Chase, is embedding AI across a 30,000-person business and steering one of the world’s most influential wealth platforms.

• Abigail Johnson, Fidelity Investments, is pushing digital assets into the institutional mainstream through Fidelity Digital Assets.

• Adena Friedman, Nasdaq, is expanding the exchange into a global technology and compliance powerhouse.

• Thasunda Brown Duckett, TIAA, is widening access to lifetime income solutions during volatile market conditions.

• Emily Portney, BNY, is positioning the custodian at the centre of the emerging on-chain finance ecosystem.

These leaders are not ancillary to change; they are shaping the critical levers of the industry’s next cycle — AI, tokenisation, retirement security, market infrastructure, and digital asset custody.

Visibility as a lever of influence

This month brought a wave of initiatives that strengthen women’s visibility in positions tied to decision-making and capital allocation. Barron’s opened nominations for its 2025 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance, a list that highlights women whose decisions directly shift markets and regulatory conversations.

Capital.com added further depth by publishing its list of 50 women investors who manage substantial portfolios or hold significant strategic influence across global finance and venture capital. These recognition mechanisms create public accountability and reshape expectations about who drives performance and innovation at the highest levels.

Governance data from the Gulf

Fresh structural insights came from the UAE through the 2025 Discovery Series: Women Transforming Financial Services. The study analysed board composition across 73 publicly listed financial companies comprising 539 board seats. Women hold 85 of them, or 15.8%. This is slightly above the UAE’s economy-wide average of 14.8%, meaning that finance is inching ahead in representation.

Yet progress is uneven. Eight companies, roughly 11% of the sample, have no women on their boards at all. The data shows that although representation is increasing, it is concentrated in certain institutions rather than distributed consistently. As global investors tighten their scrutiny around governance standards, such disparities will become more consequential.

Where policy accelerates progress

Hong Kong’s financial sector continues its rapid advance towards parity, with women now holding 45% of senior roles and 37% of board seats. Summarised as the “VOICES” framework, the latest KPMG report attributes this progress to a set of societal enablers. It also highlights regulatory measures such as the ban on single-gender boards and mandatory gender reporting. Yet the “mid-career dip” persists, signalling the need for better flexibility, stronger allyship, and targeted retention strategies.

This week also saw Banco Santander launch the 16th edition of its SW50 leadership programme, delivered with the London School of Economics. The initiative seeks the top 50 international women executives. In doing so, it reinforces a tendency: global banks are now investing directly in senior-female leadership pipelines rather than treating diversity as a compliance exercise. This shift, from symbolic programmes to structural talent acceleration, will be one of the metrics to watch over the coming year.

Conclusion

What these findings collectively reveal is a system in transition. Bias continues to distort how competence is assessed, yet visibility, governance benchmarks, and leadership-pipeline investments are gaining momentum. Rankings from Barron’s and Capital.com expand the narrative of influence. UAE board data exposes where structural gaps remain. Hong Kong’s regulatory model shows how policy can accelerate parity when executed with intent.

At Drofa Comms, we think the financial sector is moving from rhetoric to redesign. Organisations that treat gender equity as core infrastructure will define what a functioning meritocracy looks like in the next cycle.