Women lead almost three in 10 of world’s best universities

View the full list of the world’s top universities led by women

Almost three in 10 of the world’s top universities are now led by a woman, a new record, according to data collected by Times Higher Education.

Published ahead of International Women’s Day on 8 March, the figures were welcomed as evidence of slow improvement towards gender equality.

Of the top 200 institutions in the THE World University Rankings 2026, 58 have a female vice-chancellor or president – 29 per cent of the total.

This was up slightly from 27 per cent at the same point the year before, and the seventh consecutive annual increase. The proportion of female leaders has shot up from just 17 per cent in 2019, when there were 34.

Elisabeth Kelan, professor of leadership and organisation at King’s Business School, said the data was a milestone and signalled slow movement towards gender equality in higher education.

“This is symbolically important,” she said. “Yet numbers alone do not mean that practices and cultures within universities are shifting at the same pace, and change remains uneven.”

Female leaders at the best universities include Irene Tracey at the University of Oxford, Sally Kornbluth at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Deborah Prentice at the University of Cambridge.

World’s top 10 universities led by women in 2026

A fifth of the top-50 ranked universities have female vice-chancellors or presidents, compared with a third of the rest.

Of the 28 countries with universities ranked in the top 200, 11 have no women at the helm. The most visible example is China, which has 13 ranked universities; it is the only nation with at least 10 institutions to not have a single female president.

In the US, 15 of the 55 (27 per cent) top-ranked universities have a female head, which is down slightly from last year.

This is below the UK (31 per cent), Germany (33 per cent), Australia (40 per cent), and the Netherlands (55 per cent).

Analysis shows that progress on gender equity is not limited to top universities. Of the 33 UK universities with new leaders in the last year or so, 12 (36 per cent) appointed a woman.

The new data suggest that leadership churn in higher education, which has been cited across both the US and the UK, is less of an issue at the very top echelons of university rankings. Among the top-50 ranked universities, only 11 (22 per cent) saw a leadership change in the last year – and there was only one change within the top 20 (5 per cent).

The highest-ranked institutions to change leader were Columbia University and the University of Toronto, both of which appointed women.

The highest-placed university with a recently departed female leader was the University of Washington; Ana Mari Cauce stepped down last summer after a decade at the helm. The institution is now led by Robert Jones, who last month told THE that the job role was “more challenging than it has ever been”. 

Kelan said it was important to pay attention to the context of women’s appointments.

“These roles are increasingly high stakes and complex, and women are often brought in at precisely the moments when institutions face particularly difficult challenges,” she said. “This shapes what leadership looks like in practice and influences the kinds of expectations placed on women once they are in these roles.”

Given many universities have never had a woman in charge, Christine Min Wotipka, associate professor of education at Stanford University, said the data was a “cause for cautious celebration”.

“There is no shortage of women who would excel as university leaders, even if the proportion of tenured full professors who are women is not equal to that of men. In other words, institutions need not wait,” she said.

“At the same time, it is crucial to determine whether there are aspects of the role that make it particularly hostile for women, as well as if they are being led to a ‘glass cliff’, given the circumstances at some institutions.”

Note: THE’s analysis was based on the leader in post on 6 February 2026. Five institutions in the list were either newly ranked or new to the top 200 this year. There are 201 universities included due to a tie.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com