It revealed that the number of active female fund managers dropped from 2,371 globally in 2025 to 2,283 this year, outpacing the decline in active male fund managers, as active funds continue to suffer at the hands of cheaper passive options.

Citywire’s annual Alpha Female Report revealed the proportion of women active in the sector dipped from 12.9% last year to 12.6% this year. The report claimed that European fund markets are mainly responsible for the reversal, with the UK seeing a large drop from 13.2% last year to 12.5%.

The report revealed that Spain and Italy are leading the way in Europe, with 21.1% and 19.4% female managers respectively. Switzerland and Germany are near the bottom of the country table, with just 8% and 7.2% women managers respectively.

European fund hub Luxembourg reported the highest drop in female fund managers, losing 30 this year, with the UK losing just 19, Ireland losing 16 and France losing only 15.

For most of the countries losing significant numbers of female fund managers, the trend is the same: while the number of active fund managers has fallen year-on-year, the number of women has fallen faster.

Asian countries, however, are bucking the trend with the highest growth in funds run by female managers. Taiwan tops the chart at 31.1%, followed by Singapore at 24.8% and Hong Kong in third at 24.4%.

The data also revealed that so far in 2026, 83% of new funds have been handed to either a single man or a team of men, up from 81% last year. The ETF sector has only 10.3% of managers run by women, down from 10.9% last year.

Women handed funds also tend to stay in charge of them for less time than men. Citywire put the average tenure for female fund managers at 4.6 years, against 5.9 years for men. That shorter shelf life shows up in the churn figures too: of the women who have managed funds at any point in the last decade, nearly half, 46%, are no longer in charge of them, compared with 30% of men, a gap that has held steady across the seven years Citywire has tracked it.

Female fund managers’ assets, however, climbed from £4trn in 2025 to £5trn in 2026, a £1trn jump, with the data suggesting they outpaced the general rise in active fund assets.

That rise has been driven predominantly by a £900bn increase in the assets run by mixed-gender teams, which reached £4.3trn this year. The amounts run by sole female fund managers (£550bn) and female-only teams (£124bn) remain modest by comparison, though both are up year-on-year.

Women are meanwhile managing, on average, more than men. In 2026, the 2,283 active female fund managers identified by Citywire are running an average £2.6bn each, compared with an average £2.5bn run by men.

That marks a shift from last year, when the numbers were virtually indistinguishable: £2.067bn for women versus £2.065bn for men.

The £4.3trn of active funds run by mixed-gender teams plays a big role in the higher average manager assets run by women compared with men. That’s shown by the comparatively smaller amounts women run on their own: the average fund run by a woman, or a team of women, stands at £405m, compared with £642m for men.