Why B2B Needs More Women at the Table - And What They Need to Do When They Get There

Did you know that in the corridors of b2b power, the CMO seat is still mostly filled by men? In the UK and US, women make up just 30-40% of b2b marketing leaders, with even fewer represented at the boardroom table. And in sectors like fintech and cybersecurity, that number drops even further, with some estimates suggesting women occupy less than 20% of senior marketing roles.

It’s not a talent gap that it’s so often represented as, it’s a pipeline problem reinforced by old rules, inherited cultures, and narrow ideas about what makes someone “leadership material.”

The Myth of the Commercial-Only Marketer

We talked in our recent Mind Your b2b Business Newsletter about the fact that many b2b industries (tech, manufacturing, engineering, finance) have developed with sales and product at the centre of their gravity. Marketing was seen as a support function: executional, reactive, and removed from strategy. Climbing the ranks in that environment has often been done by adopting a dominant style - one built around control, performance language, and short-term wins.

And that style still defines many CEO expectations. And it just so happens to be male-coded.

But b2b is changing. The complexity is higher, the buyers are more emotionally led, and trust is harder to earn. The best CMOs now need to:

• Translate buyer signals into strategic decisions
  
• Build credibility across product, sales, and finance
  
• Align internal culture with external brand
  
• Elevate insight that challenges the business, not just report marketing performance
  

That’s not a checklist of soft skills, but a market power. And quite frankly that is where many women excel, not because of gender, but because of experience navigating nuanced, cross-functional terrain.

Who is the Voice of the Market

So as CMOs look to secure influence at the top table, the most powerful shift is from outputs to insight.

That’s where women often bring a natural advantage. The ability to listen closely, interpret complexity, and translate human behaviour into organisational action is at the heart of becoming the voice of the market, not just the voice of marketing.

In this role, the CMO isn’t just reporting on what they did. They’re shaping what the company does next. And this shift away from performative metrics toward strategic interpretation suits the traits we often associate with female leadership; empathy, synthesis, and systems thinking.

What Happens When Women Take the Seat

When more women rise to the CMO level in b2b, something shifts. These leaders are more likely to:

• Bring the market in. Female CMOs are often strong listeners, sensing shifts in customer sentiment and making space for qualitative insight alongside data.
  
• Modernise culture. From team structures to mental health policies, women often drive more inclusive and emotionally intelligent leadership.
  
• Reframe performance. Rather than just report leads or pipeline, they contextualise marketing’s contribution to long-term value; brand trust, partner ecosystem, and competitive positioning.
  
• Elevate insight. They prioritise creating feedback loops, building 'market truth' pages, and hosting customer-led conversations that influence not just messaging, but product and strategy.
  

This isn’t hypothetical. In companies where CMOs (of any gender) are central to growth strategy, the business is twice as likely to exceed 5% annual revenue growth (McKinsey).

The Call to Change

Please understand that we are not arguing that women make better CMOs. But we are arguing that b2b growth depends on more diverse thinking at the top. That means:

• Elevating people with emotional intelligence, not just commercial swagger
  
• Recognising that 'strategic' doesn’t have to mean louder, faster, or more aggressive
  
• Redesigning the path to the big seat so it isn’t guarded by outdated ideas about what a leader looks like
  
• Championing voices that can reflect the market’s reality, not just marketing’s results
  

If you want to win in modern b2b, the question isn’t just how many women are in the room. It’s how many voices you’re truly listening to once they’re there and whether they’re being empowered to tell you what really matters.