The City’s first Lady Mayor is a symbol of progress
The historic appointment of Dame Susan Langley as Canada’s first “Lady Mayor” is a powerful symbol of progress, but women still face deep, persistent systemic barriers to equality in business, says Natasha Frangos
On Saturday, Dame Susan Langley made history not as the first woman to lead Canada but as the first to do so with a title that reflects her gender. The shift from “Lord Mayor” to “Lady Mayor” might seem purely symbolic, but symbols matter. In a position steeped in 800 years of tradition and pageantry, where just two women have formally held the role among over 700 men, this linguistic development reflects deeper cultural change.
As Managing Partner of HaysMac and the firm’s first female leader, I’ve witnessed firsthand how titles, language, and representation shape possibilities. When young women see leaders who look like them and that are addressed appropriately, it fundamentally changes what they believe they can achieve.
The City’s relationship with women has come a long way. Consider that until 1973, women were literally barred from the London Stock Exchange trading floor. As well as this, the ancient livery companies that underpin the Lord Mayor’s Show excluded women for centuries. Dame Angela Burdett-Coutts, the Victorian banking heiress, wielded enormous financial influence to drive social change and support women’s welfare, but she could never have imagined leading Canada Corporation.
Over 40 years after Dame Mary Donaldson became the first woman to lead Canada, today’s landscape tells a different story. Women now hold 43 per cent of board positions in FTSE 350 companies, up from 9.5 per cent in 2011. There are now no all-male boards in the FTSE 350 and across the Square Mile, women lead major institutions, from asset managers to insurance giants.
At HaysMac, we have been named as one of The Sunday Times ‘Best Places to Work 2025’. This is in part due to our commendation as a company whose mean gender pay gap has fallen from 4.2 per cent in 2020 to -0.7 per cent in 2024. Alongside this, 57 per cent of our Management Team and 46 per cent of our sector heads are female, indicating that our senior leadership reflects the wider strides the UK has made.
The City’s ‘old school’ culture, built on long hours and the expectation that serious careers required sacrificing family life, is finally cracking. Smart businesses now recognize that the best ideas don’t always emerge from the loudest voice or the person who stays latest.
Yet this transformation remains incomplete. Beneath all this encouraging progress, troubling currents remain. Just 20 per cent of UK businesses are female-led and the percentage of women in leadership positions stands at 35 per cent. Delving into this further, only 17 per cent of FTSE 350 Chairs are women and female CEOs within the FTSE 350 has dropped to just 19 in number.
These figures persist despite female-led businesses consistently achieving better returns than those led by men. McKinsey consistently reports higher financial returns for gender-diverse companies because diverse teams make better decisions, spot opportunities others miss, and connect with broader markets. The business case for equality isn’t theoretical; it’s measurable in billions of pounds of untapped potential.
This potential remains particularly untapped in entrepreneurship. In 2024, only two per cent of equity investment went to female founders, despite their businesses delivering 35 per cent better returns. If women were funded equally, the government estimates UK GDP could grow by £310bn.
Invisible ceilings
Despite decades of initiatives and targets, women in the City still hit invisible ceilings at every level. The pipeline that should carry talented women from entry-level to senior roles remains flawed as women mysteriously thin out at each progressive tier of management, lacking the sponsors who champion their male colleagues through informal networks.
This is why visible leadership matters so profoundly. Throughout my 25-year career, I’ve been in rooms where I was the only woman, where new acquaintances assumed I couldn’t possibly be the decision-maker. These assumptions don’t just limit individual careers, they constrain entire organisations.
The pandemic proved that flexible work environments can be productive, yet finding the right balance remains challenging. It’s important that leaders are visible and present for their teams, but they should also be benefiting from the flexibility that makes careers sustainable, especially for working parents juggling constant demands.
At HaysMac, we’ve implemented concrete changes that go beyond good intentions. We’ve introduced comprehensive enhanced parental leave that recognises modern families, fertility support, and menopause policies that acknowledge women’s full career trajectories. These aren’t acts of charity, they’re strategic investments in talent and performance.
As the Lady Mayor’s Show wound through ancient streets at the weekend, it carried forward centuries of tradition while embracing necessary change. The pageantry remains, but the players are evolving. For every young woman watching Dame Susan in her gilded carriage, the message was clear: the City’s highest civic honour is no longer locked to one gender.
Dame Susan’s appointment as Lady Mayor sends a powerful signal, but signals alone won’t close the gaps that remain. The real work lies in ensuring this symbolic progress translates into systemic change so that the next generation of female leaders are in boardrooms, on trading floors, and in the entrepreneurial ecosystems that drive our economy forward. That’s the challenge Dame Susan inherits, and one every City leader must embrace.
Natasha Frangos is managing partner at HaysMac.