December 17, 2025 · Research
What really matters: a look at gender diversity in the selection of executives
Many organisations aim to increase the number of women in leadership and board positions – yet, in practice, little changes. Why is this the case? A joint research project by FH OST and HWZ is providing data-driven answers for the first time. As part of the Innosuisse project «Active Sourcing and Embedded Recruiting in Top Management with Machine Learning», HWZ undertook the analysis of real applications – making previously invisible patterns visible.
Hard qualifications dominate – at the expense of actual competencies
The study results reveal one point particularly clearly: both applicants and recruitment professionals almost instinctively base their assessments on «hard qualifications» – such as titles, positions, degrees, or previous leadership roles. These are perceived as reliable indicators of suitability, even though they provide little insight into how competently someone actually leads, communicates, or thinks strategically.
Particularly problematic is the fact that women are judged by precisely these criteria, even though they have had structurally less access to top positions and are therefore less able to provide such «hard» evidence.
Result of the analysis:
Women are assessed on the basis of hard qualifications in 56 % of cases, compared to only 35 % for men. Men benefit significantly more often from personality-based evaluations, which grant them an implicit advantage of trust.
What the analysis reveals
For the study, HWZ analysed around 22'000 motivation letters from applicants and 5'500 assessments from a Swiss recruitment company. Using density-based clustering and word embeddings, patterns were identified that reveal which skills and qualifications were considered and how they were evaluated. The following areas of qualifications and competencies were identified: social skills, hard qualifications, personality, cognitive skills, and suitability for the job.
The results are clear:
Of all five areas of competence, hard skills are considered the most important (with 49 % among applicants and 41 % among recruiters).
Competencies such as strategic thinking, adaptability to change, or strong communication skills carry less weight in the application process.
The data from recruitment agencies also show that much greater emphasis is placed on personality for men (33 %) than for women (13 %). For women, hard qualifications are therefore very much the main focus, while personality is of secondary importance. Among men, this balance is much more even.
Why this is relevant for organisations
Research shows that women must first prove they are highly qualified before they are considered suitable for leadership roles. Decision-makers are more likely to assume that men possess this suitability.
A competency-based approach, on the other hand, would enable recruiters and organisations to recognise deep-level diversity – that is, differing perspectives, values, attitudes and skills, which have been shown to lead to better decision-making at top management level.
HWZ’s contribution: data, patterns and new perspectives
HWZ’s contribution in data science was crucial in making these patterns visible. By combining AI-supported text analysis with a competence-oriented interpretative approach, the team demonstrated how deeply gender-based differences in assessment are embedded within recruitment processes – and how organisations can work to reduce them.
In a further, in-depth research project, HWZ is now examining which selection criteria in the application process should be adjusted and how qualifications and competencies should be weighted in future. The aim is, on the one hand, to increase gender diversity and, on the other, to ensure that competent individuals become more visible—particularly those who, under the previous selection process with its strong emphasis on hard qualifications, had little chance of making it onto the longlist or shortlist. Many of these individuals will be women.
Practice-oriented research for businesses
The Center for Research & Methods at HWZ combines scientific methodologies with real-world challenges from business practice. The results of this project demonstrate how data-driven analyses can help to reveal bias and improve decision-making processes.
Conclusion: Those who seek diversity must change their selection logic
Research clearly shows: as long as hard qualifications are overvalued and competencies underestimated, genuine gender diversity in top management will remain unattainable. Organisations that wish to identify the best talent – both women and men – must modernise their selection processes and place greater emphasis on competencies.
With its analysis, HWZ makes an important contribution: it highlights where distortions arise, how they take effect, and how data-driven methods can help to make better decisions.
