The downtown Houston skyline.

Downtown San Antonio.

The number of women holding the top jobs at U.S. corporations is dropping after decades of progress, and business leaders are worried.

The percentage of new chief executive officers in America who are women was just 25% in May, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a global outplacement and executive coaching firm. That’s down from 29% between January and May 2024.

In Texas, only 16% of new CEOs are women this year, down from 28% in 2024. And women are leaving the CEO role at a faster clip: 17% of departures so far in 2025 compared to 14% last year.

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To tackle this trend, the Texas Women’s Foundation, preparing to celebrate 40 years of empowering women and girls, is launching an Executive Leadership Accelerator. The program for female executives comes at a political moment when programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion are out of favor, yet still necessary to overcome cultural biases.

“The last barrier is these sorts of education and leadership opportunities available to women to pave the way for, and I’ll use the word, it’s not popular at the moment, but, but for greater equity on the leadership front,” Karen Hughes White, CEO of the foundation, told me.

Women do not lack the desire to achieve the highest positions in business. A

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