The rise of the bro-co-CEO
Yesterday, Daniel Eyk, the founder of Spotify, announced that he would step down in the new year. Two senior executives will take over, Gustav Södström, Senior Product and Technology Official, Alex Norster, Chief Business Officer, Participated in place.
Through this news, the music Streamer team became the third company to choose the Co-CEO track within slightly over a week. A few days ago, on September 29, Kumkast said that the CEO of Galse Brian Roberts will join Michael Kavanag, the former president in January. (The arrangement is read as part of the Caliphate Plan.
The trio of ads was great, referring to a small direction: leaders who share the corner office, which is a more common practice of private stock companies and many extremist values, such as Netflix. It is worth noting that all members of the Co-CEOS gang are men.
This is not a big surprise: men dominate Cuites and CEO JOB in Corporate Americana. Men who have won new roles this month may be better or more clear in peer groups. However, when companies choose to double the number of people who hold the supreme title, one may assume that it will improve the possibilities that women will be used for this position. At one time, before DEI became an existing topic, companies described the pride of their gender diversity in driving.
But Fortune found that CO-COO pairs between the sexes between the sexes are very rare, recently and historically. Although women participating are not moderate among startups that have been established, female joint females are rare for women who run individual companies.
In numbers
Here’s what data shows: Among the Fortune 500 companies, women lead only 11 % of institutions – although one out of 10 is a high point after years of slow progress. Fortune 500 EUROPE and Fortune 500 are also showing that women are lagging behind men in the chief executive jobs, as women run only 6 % of companies in both classifications.
When we looked back in Fortune 500 data on CO-CEO settings that extend until 1998, we only found three examples of associated executives who included women. We were unable to find any examples of two women who share the position of CEO of Fortune 500.
For decades, Herbert and Marion Sandler, a couple, were giving Golden West Financial before his purchase by Wakovia in 2006. In Intel, there were two temporary partners this year during the three -month gap between the departure of the CEO last December and a new date for a leader in March. In Oracle, Safra Catz and the late Mark Hurd participated for five years, from 2014 to 2019, when Heard died due to an unveiled disease. (One of the warnings: This depends on data from the Fortune Fortune 500 classifications, which provide footage of the corporate leadership at the time of publication. If other women are appointed to the short-term CO-COOS roles among our publishing dates, we may miss them.)
Throughout the world, there are other examples: the UK stores appointed marks and Spencer mixed with sex in 2022, and the couple shared the job for two years, and the German software leader SAP was appointed senior gender -mixed executives in 2019 who worked together for one year before reporting the problems that reported the non -organization to divide. Either way, the participating women left, and the men remained as a single executive.
“The male virgin fights it”
The results we have reached reflect a problem with the well -covered driving line luck Over the years: Women still do not sit in the strongest roles within C-SUITE, that is, the jobs of the financial manager and CO, which are likely to produce senior executives in the future. The councils and executives do not do enough to put women on the road to the higher function. The few women who break down to hold roles such as CMO, CMO or General Adviser.
At Free Float Analytics, an independent research company that studies councils and executives, analysts Matt Muscardi and Damion Rallis analyzed women in C-SUITE and on the paintings of many companies that are publicly published this year. like luck I mentioned for the first time, they found what they called “BRO IPO” this summer with women who represent only 11 % of 205 executives in leadership roles listed in subscription files in the first half of August. The retreat, they saw the same trend when they looked at the subscriptions of the first seven months of 2025.
According to their analysis of securities files, 86 % of executives in companies that submitted the public to the public in that time period are men, which is a significant increase compared to 2024, where men made up 63 % of the executives of companies that have been the first time in trading. (They found one pair at CO-CEO in public subscription data. CO-CEOS was both men.)
Rales notes that in many cases, CO-CEOS is mainly competing for a founder who is still a force or former CEO. In Spotify, EK moves to the position of CEO, which means that he will have the final control of the main decisions. Larry Ellson, co -founder of Oracle and one of the richest people in the world, is still president of Oracle Corporation and chief technology employee. Rales says, “They do not give up control, and adhere to the preservation of order and domination,” which resembles the common dates in males to “hunger games, the chief executive of the king’s entertainment.”
“I see it as male dictators with a lot of strength and ego that they allowed their male lives to fight to know who will become the best dog.”
Coco Brown, CEO of Athena Alliance, a membership organization for senior executive women, says she believes that subscriptions are in subscription subscription Joe Rogan experience Podcast in January.
“In part of the era, there is a violent reaction to the feeling of femininity that is brought to the workforce,” says Brown. She added that there is a feeling, saying: “We have eased the workforce and need to restore some grains and some courage.”
But it is also suspected that this set of appointments may be part of a more knowledgeable story – when a man says, “I get my comrades. I get a choice of comfort.”
This story was originally shown on Fortune.com
2025-10-01 20:31:00
