Biopharma is set to lose two of the industry’s rare women CEOs—GSK’s Emma Walmsley and Merck KGaA's Belén Garijo—leaving a dearth of women-helmed large life sciences companies.
According to the 2025 Global Gender Gap Report (PDF), it will take 123 years to achieve gender parity worldwide based on the current speed of progress.
The Life Sciences are unusual in that women make up 56% of the work pool. But even here, the gender divide at the top is as wide as ever.
New survey findings from Meet Life Sciences examine at least four contributing factors to the persistent gender gap, as well as impact it has on the industry.
The talent solutions company connected with more than 25,000 professionals in life sciences to gather information about the industry’s gender gap in leadership roles. The white paper (PDF) is a follow-up to its own 2023 survey and was designed to gauge any progress made over the last two years.
While the report identifies signs for optimism, “the overall results were largely disappointing,” according to Meet Life Sciences. The company pointed to persistent barriers and stagnant attitudes.
The findings
When survey responders were asked if they believed they had equal opportunities getting to their current position, 60% said “yes”— a 5% decrease from the 2023 survey.
The decline can be considered both as a potential positive and negative, Meet Life Sciences said, pointing to a more public acknowledgement of systemic barriers as a plus, or it could be that current work environments are perceived as less fair.
“I have to work twice as hard and explain myself a lot more than my male colleagues, which is really frustrating,” one anonymous survey responder wrote. “Growth opportunities are not in reach despite positive evaluations.”
When asked if men had an advantage in securing top roles, 56% of respondents answered “yes,” while 44% disagreed.
The “yes” responses climbed slightly from 41% in 2023.
Participants were also asked if they would want more women in leadership spots, with 92% saying they would. This is up five percentage points from 2023, when 87% of respondents said “yes.”
The life sciences snapshot paints a “mixed picture,” according to the talent recruiter company. While visibility has improved and more people want women to lead, barriers still remain.
Why isn’t the gender gap closing?
The report lays out four reasons underlying the persistent gap in equitable gender representation at the top level.
The first is the lack of representation of women in STEM. Women only account for 35% of STEM positions, according to a 2025 report (PDF) from the National Girls Collaborative Project. The field is not catered toward girls and is clouded by the persistent—and false—stereotype that boys are inherently better at STEM.
A second factor is “the motherhood penalty.” This concept encompasses the fact that women still spend more time on domestic chores (PDF) than men and that when a woman becomes a mother, she is often seen as less committed to her career.
Thirdly, menopause is still a largely stigmatized experience that can prompt numerous physical changes. Women may cut down on hours or leave the workforce entirely due to their symptoms, particularly if they fear judgment or career penalty.
Finally, women still face general social bias and discrimination for just being, well, women. Even “subtle bias” disrupts equitable representation, making women more likely subjects of workplace harassment, more commonly undervalued and “more often assigned a disproportionate share of non-promotable tasks,” the report reads.
Why it matters
Lacking diversity at the C-suite level can negatively impact innovation, efficiency and overall company performance. When fewer women hold senior positions, top talent in the market is missed and systemic inequality deepens.
Without a vast swath of lived experience to pull from, strategies then become less inclusive and less effective.
“I strongly believe that there's a lot of really strong, smart talent out there that looks like anyone,” Cantos Ventures principal Amee Kapadia told Fierce Biotech in a 2023 interview. “So, if you are finding that in order to hire a woman, you have to lower your standards, you're just not casting a wide enough net.”