Seven out of ten companies in the DR are led by men, according to the ONE

77.7% of formal companies in the Dominican Republic with 16 or more employees are run by a man. Only 15.9% have a woman as the highest authority.

That is the snapshot taken by the National Statistics Office (ONE) in its report Characteristics of companies according to the sex of the company’s highest authority 2025, prepared from the National Survey of Economic Activity (ENAE) with data from the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years and published this August.

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The study covered 2,380 companies selected probabilistically across nine sectors of the national economy.

The gap is also measured in employment and income

The distance between both groups becomes more pronounced when measured in terms of employment and income. Companies under male leadership concentrate 82.5% of the registered employment in the analyzed universe, compared to the 12% generated by those led by women.

The average staff size reflects that same asymmetry: 97 employees per company in the case of men and 69 for women.

In the revenue brackets above RD$500 million (equivalent to about USD 8.6 million), male leadership accounts for almost all cases. Companies led by women only outnumber those led by men in the segments of up to RD$10 million in revenue (around USD 171,000).

Electricity and mining, among the sectors with the lowest female presence

Electricity supply companies have the lowest female presence in management: 95.1% of their top executives are men. They are followed by mining and quarrying, with 88.5%, and manufacturing, with 85.9%.

At the opposite end, the accommodation and food services sector concentrates the highest proportion of female leadership, with 27.2%, followed by commerce, with 16.2%.

The pattern repeats when crossing company size with the gender of the person leading it. The highest presence of women in management occurs in organizations with between 30 and 49 employees, where they reach 18.9%. From 100 employees onwards, that percentage falls and stabilizes between 12% and 13%.

Executives are younger and have a higher level of education

One of the signs that the report identifies as a possible trend of change is the age profile. 24% of women who hold the highest authority in their companies are 35 years old or younger, compared to 10.5% in the case of men. The ONE attributes this difference to a more recent incorporation of young women into management positions.

This is supported by another piece of data: 18.9% of women in top management assumed that position in the last three years, double the 10.5% recorded among men in the same period.

In academic training, women in leadership positions also exceed the general average. 55.9% have a university degree, compared to 51.6% of total top authorities, and 26% have postgraduate studies, above the 24.7% general average.

A business dome with low turnover

Beyond the gender gap, the report portrays a corporate leadership with low mobility. 52.7% of top executives have been at the helm of their company for 11 years or more, and 37.3% of the total are 56 years of age or older.

That profile of prolonged tenure coexists with the arrival of younger executives, which suggests that generational renewal is progressing unevenly according to gender.

The regional comparison

The ONE report is published at a time when the Dominican Republic is recording measurable progress in other parity indicators. In 2025, the country climbed 21 positions in the Global Gender Gap Report of the World Economic Forum, to 61st place out of 148 countries evaluated, with improvements in political empowerment and economic participation.

However, the contrast persists in the formal private sector. A regional analysis by PwC published in 2026 on Central America and the Dominican Republic warns that 57% of organizations do not have specific initiatives for the development of female leadership and that 33% do not measure any gender indicators.

Globally, the World Economic Forum calculated in 2026 that women hold 24.6% of senior management positions worldwide. In Latin America and the Caribbean, that figure rises to 34.6%, the highest of all regions analyzed. The Dominican Republic, with 15.9% of formal companies under female leadership, remains below that regional average.

The report was prepared by the ONE, with the objective of identifying gender gaps in the country’s formal productive fabric and supporting public inclusion policies in the business sphere.

SOURCE: INFOBAE