The gender gap in influencer marketing:
women lead until 500k followers

The headline: a majority that disappears at the top

Among European creators with an identified gender, women are a clear majority of small accounts on Instagram and TikTok. Their share declines at each tier and passes under parity between 500k and one million followers.

The drop is 17 points on Instagram and 22 points on TikTok. It is gradual: there is no single tier where women leave, each step up simply contains proportionally fewer of them.

Platform by platform: Instagram, TikTok and YouTube

Source: TANKE internal data, Instagram analyses and B2B data providers including Kolsquare and onsocial.ai. Data collected in November 2026.

TikTok starts higher and falls faster. Women are 65% of creators between 10k and 50k followers, the highest share of the three platforms, and 52% between 100k and 500k.

Instagram holds a female majority longer, up to 500k followers, then drops to 42% above one million.

YouTube is a different market. Women are 37% of channels between 10k and 50k subscribers and 23% above one million. There is no tier where they are the majority.

Country by country: the same curve everywhere

The six largest European markets all show the same decline on Instagram. The starting point and the size of the drop differ.

Source: TANKE internal data, Instagram analyses and B2B data providers including Kolsquare and onsocial.ai. Data collected in November 2026. Instagram, accounts with an identified gender.

Poland has the most female creator base and keeps a small female majority at the top. France shows the lowest share of women above one million followers. On TikTok, the picture is similar:

Source: TANKE internal data, Instagram analyses and B2B data providers including Kolsquare and onsocial.ai. Data collected in November 2026. TikTok, accounts with an identified gender.

Smaller markets were left out of these tables because they have too few accounts above one million followers for a reliable percentage.

Europe compared with the United States

American creators follow the same curve, with a softer landing. On Instagram, women are 58% of American creators between 10k and 50k followers, about the same level as in Europe, and 48% above one million, against 42% in Europe.

Source: TANKE internal data, Instagram analyses and B2B data providers including Kolsquare and onsocial.ai. Data collected in November 2026.

The largest difference is on YouTube, where women are 33% of American channels above one million subscribers and 23% of European ones.

Possible explanations

The census measures the gap, not its causes. Three explanations are consistent with what we see in campaigns, and none of them is proven by this data alone.

• Content categories. The largest accounts are concentrated in sport, gaming, comedy and music, where male creators are more numerous. Beauty, fashion and lifestyle, where women dominate, produce many mid-size accounts and fewer very large ones.
• Celebrity accounts. Above one million followers, a growing part of the accounts belongs to athletes, artists and TV personalities whose fame was built outside social media.
• Platform history. YouTube’s first large channels were built around gaming and humour, and those channels have had more than ten years to grow.

What it means for brands

• Top-tier line-ups lean male by default. A brief that asks only for accounts above one million followers draws from a pool where women are about four in ten. Reaching a balanced line-up takes an explicit choice.
• The mid tier is the most balanced. Between 100k and 500k followers, women are 55% of Instagram creators and 52% of TikTok creators in Europe.
• Creator gender is not audience gender. A male creator can have a mostly female audience, and the reverse. Selection should rest on audience data, checked profile by profile.

Want a creator line-up that matches your audience? Ask TANKE for a selection based on verified audience data.

Methodology and source

The census counts creator accounts with at least 10,000 followers on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. An account is attached to a country when more than 30% of its audience is located there. We chose 30% instead of a simple majority because large accounts tend to have more international audiences, and a 50% rule would remove many of them.

• Markets: the ten largest European creator markets in the data (Italy, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Netherlands, Portugal, Greece, Romania), with the United States as a benchmark. Smaller markets were left out because their top tiers hold too few accounts to give stable shares.
• Sample: close to 1.8 million account records across the eleven markets. An account with a split audience can count in two countries, so country figures should not be added up.
• Gender: shares are calculated on accounts with an identified gender (individual creators, not brands or media), which is 88% of Instagram accounts, 98% on TikTok and 81% on YouTube.
• Tiers: accounts above 5 million followers are merged into the “1M and more” tier. Accounts under 10,000 followers are excluded, because coverage of very small accounts varies too much from one country to the next.
• Reading the figures: the data is a large sample of each market, not an official register. Shares and ratios are more robust than absolute counts, which is why this study reports percentages first. Population figures are rounded 2025 estimates.

Source: TANKE internal data, Instagram analyses and B2B data providers including Kolsquare and onsocial.ai. Data collected in November 2026.

Frequently asked questions