General financial advice – save consistently, invest for the long term and protect what you build – holds true for most people. But it only goes so far. Different groups face different financial realities, shaped by income patterns, career paths and the structures they operate within, and a financial plan that ignores this ends up generic at best and unhelpful at worst.
Women in leadership are a clear example. They are managing higher incomes, more complex pay structures and greater responsibility than most, often while navigating a professional landscape that still isn’t built with them in mind.
Here, Fairstone looks at what that landscape means financially, and how the right plan can help women in leadership to hold onto and grow what their hard work has earned them.
Ireland has made genuine progress on gender representation in senior management. Grant Thornton’s Women in Business 2026 report puts women at 41.4% of senior management roles in Irish mid-market companies, up from 36.5% the year before, and a significant rise from just 15.6% when the research began in 2004. The number of Irish businesses with an all-male leadership team has also fallen sharply, from 16.3% in 2025 to under 7% in 2026.
Look closer, though, and the picture is less balanced than the headline figure suggests. The same research found that:
Women in Ireland are four times more likely to hold a CFO (63.7%) or HR Director (58.8%) role than a CEO position (14.7%), and thirty times more likely to hold one of those roles than to become Chair (2.0%).
This matters financially, not just symbolically. CEO and Chair roles typically carry the highest base pay, the largest bonus and equity components, and the greatest long-term wealth-building potential of any position in a company.
Being well represented in senior management overall, while remaining scarce at the very top, means that even successful, high-earning women in leadership can still be earning and accumulating wealth on a different trajectory to their male peers in equivalent-seniority roles.
This is compounded by how that income tends to be managed once it is earned. Research from CCPC’s 2023 national financial literacy survey found that Irish women are more likely to hold a deposit account than men (70% versus 63%), and nearly twice as likely to report having no savings at all (20% versus 12%).
This pattern is consistent with a broader body of academic research: a 2024 systematic review of studies published between 2014 and 2024 found that women consistently show lower risk tolerance and reduced participation in higher-growth investments compared to men, a pattern shaped more by structural and cultural factors than by financial capability.
Indeed, the same CCPC research found Irish women are more likely than men to hold a third-level qualification, yet less likely to meet the OECD’s minimum financial knowledge benchmark, with the gap concentrated specifically in compound interest, inflation and diversification, some of the exact concepts that matter most once income and assets start to grow.
Women in leadership face a combination of financial pressures that rarely appear in generic financial advice.
The gender pay gap remains a real constraint on how much income there is to plan around in the first place, while career breaks for childcare or caregiving can interrupt pension contributions at precisely the career stage when compounding matters most. Women also tend to live longer than men, meaning retirement savings need to stretch further.
Each of these challenges is well documented. What is less often discussed is how they interact with the specific financial mechanics of leadership itself.
Leadership income is rarely a single, predictable salary. It often includes performance-related bonuses, deferred compensation or share-based incentives, all of which introduce timing and structuring decisions that a standard PAYE salary does not.
Higher leadership pay also pushes many women fully into Ireland’s higher tax band, where income tax, USC and PRSI combined can take the marginal rate on additional earnings to around 52%. Without a plan that accounts for this, a meaningful share of hard-won income can be lost to inefficient structuring rather than genuinely unavoidable tax.
These pressures also feed directly into the gender pension gap. Career interruptions reduce contribution years at a senior salary level, when the pension contributions being missed are at their largest.
For women in leadership, closing that gap is not just about saving more. It is about making sure that a complex income, spread across salary, bonus and other benefits, is being structured and invested as efficiently as the seniority of the role deserves.
A financial plan for a senior leader needs to do more than the basics well. The order below reflects a practical starting point: secure what you already have, protect against disruption to your future income and assets, then focus on growth.
Start with a clear picture of income, outgoings and savings, and build an emergency fund that reflects your actual lifestyle and responsibilities, not a generic three-month rule of thumb.
For a senior leader, this foundation should also include income protection and life cover sized to your real earnings, including bonus and benefit income, not just base salary.
Given that women are statistically more likely to hold no emergency savings at all, this first step matters more than it might seem, and it is the foundation everything else in your plan is built on.
With a longer retirement to fund and career breaks more likely to have interrupted contributions, retirement planning deserves particular attention.
Make full use of employer pension schemes and consider Additional Voluntary Contributions to catch up on any gap left by time out of the workforce or a lower-contribution period earlier in your career.
Estate planning belongs in this stage too. A will, and where relevant a review of how assets, benefits and share-based pay are structured, ensures that what you have built is protected and passed on in line with your wishes, rather than left to default rules.
Given the statistical tendency to hold more in cash and less in growth assets, this is often the area where women’s leadership-level income underperforms its potential. Cash feels safe, but with inflation eroding real returns over time, it rarely builds wealth at the pace a senior income could support.
Working with an adviser to build a diversified portfolio, matched to your actual risk tolerance and timeframe rather than an assumed one, is often the single biggest lever available for turning a strong salary into lasting financial independence.
In reality, these three areas are rarely tackled one after another. A good financial plan works on foundation, protection, retirement and growth incrementally and at the same time, so that no area is left behind while you focus on a demanding career.
That kind of integrated planning is difficult to do well alone, particularly alongside the demands of a leadership role, which is exactly why tailored professional advice matters. At Fairstone, our financial planning and wealth management services are built around your full financial picture – income, protection, retirement, investments and estate planning – so that your plan reflects both your career ambitions and your life priorities.
If you are ready to make sure your financial plan matches the seniority of your role, book a no-obligation consultation with Fairstone to get started.
Sources
Grant Thornton Ireland, Women in Business 2026 Report
The Irish Times, reporting on CCPC financial literacy survey findings
This publication is for general information purposes and is not an invitation to deal or address your specific requirements. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and may change in the future. No individual should act on this information without receiving appropriate professional financial, legal and tax advice after a thorough examination of their particular circumstances.
