Where Women Are Most Likely to Be Your Boss

People working in Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Jamaica are most likely to have a female boss. This is according to data by the International Labor Organization. The latest data from 2022 and 2023 shows that in Burkina Faso and Nigeria, between 67 percent and 70 percent of all managers are women. Jamaica and Botswana are the only other countries with available data listing more female than male managers, at around 60 percent and 52 percent, respectively.

More countries with a high share of women in managerial positions are the Philippines and Caribbean island nation Saint Lucia as well as Jordan and Zambia. Despite being in the top 10 of the countries with the most female managers (out of around 100 where this data was available for recent years), neither of the four nations has achieved gender parity in managerial positions, speaking volumes to the huge gender gaps that still persist for women in the workplace.

Women's participation in business and entrepreneurship is strong in Africa, explaining why the continent boasts many female managers. However, in Africa and elsewhere, women managers are more often than not restricted to fields deemed female-centric, for example human resources, administration, finance, marketing or public relations - areas the ILO defines as business support functions. The outsourcing industry in the Philippines providing such services has, for example, been tied to the high share of women managers in the country.

In nations with less developed formal labor markets, founding and running one's own company is also essential for many women. They therefore often head smaller businesses and those that they have founded themselves, driving up the number of female managers in developing countries. This type of necessity-driven entrepreneurialism, however, doesn't mean that there will necessarily be more women represented in the senior management or C-suites of large companies, in important government positions or in more prestigious investment funding rounds.

The share of female managers is also high in Eastern Europe at almost 42 percent as of 2022, North America at around 40 percent, Southeast Asia at around 39 percent and Northern Europe at approximately 38 percent.

The MENA region had the lowest share of managers who are women at just over 15 percent. Yet, Jordan is featured among the countries with the most female managers, again due to female-centric fields. The ILO writes that Jordanese women are dominating positions in education as school and kindergarten principals, driving up the share of female managers which would otherwise be in the single digits.

Other countries in the region are among the countries with the fewest female managers, including Morocco (12.4 percent), Qatar (13.8 percent) and Egypt (14 percent). Also among the lowest-ranked nations are Bangladesh (7.3 percent), India (12.6 percent) and surprisingly, Japan and South Korea (14.6 percent and 16.3 percent, respectively). Like in MENA countries, extremely traditional gender roles governing daily life and the workplace are holding women back in these places.