Only 17% of executive posts in listed companies in Portugal occupied by women

The percentage of women sitting on the executive boards of listed Portuguese companies has more than doubled since 2017 – the year in which the ratios of women on boards was announced.

Nevertheless, the number of women in executive and strategic roles in listed companies remains low and represents around one-third of executive posts or 17.4%.

“Since the beginning of 2017, the year in which it was decided to implement quotas in listed companies, Portugal has increased the number of female directors in listed companies by 136%, i.e. the percentage more than doubled, from 15.5% to 36.6%”, concludes an analysis by the Innovators Forum’25 – powered by Sonae, which discussed the impact of diversity on companies’ competitiveness at the Leixões Port Cruise Terminal this week.

The numbers reveal that Portugal was the fifth country that most evolved in terms of women being represented on the boards of listed companies from 30 European companies analysed, being behind Romania (200%), Greece (190%), Malta (140%), and Ireland (139%).

This meant that Portugal jumped from 20th place to 15th place in the ranking of listed companies.
According to the same analysis, Portugal exceeded the average of 35.2% of women directors on the main listed companies in the European Union, but far from the values registered in France (46.9%), Iceland (45.7%), Italy (44.4%), Denmark (44.3%), and the United Kingdom (44.3%) which were the countries that had most women on their boards of directors.