This blind spot in corporate America is leaving one million women behind

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The biggest challenge women face when rising up the corporate ladder may be one that few companies even know about. 

Right after entering the workforce, women are less likely than their male peers to get that first promotion to manager, according to a joint study conducted by LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company. For every 100 men promoted and hired to manager for the first time, 72 women are given the same title. The numbers are far worse when you look at the number of Black and Latina women getting into entry-level management. 

This “broken rung” up the corporate ladder, as researchers refer to it, is one of the main reasons why men hold 62 percent of manager-level positions while women hold just 38 percent.

Studies on the lack of women in senior leadership across industries often focus on the step back many women must take in their careers to have children. Yet the latest from LeanIn and McKinsey proves that access to opportunities at work for women begin to narrow even before they start to have families. And if corporations can figure out how to promote entry-level female employees at the same rate as men, one million more women could be added to management in American workplaces over the next five years, according to the report.

“It’s strange, because if you’re only four or five years into your career, there hasn’t been enough time to differentiate female and male performance,” said Lareina Yee, Senior Partner and Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at McKinsey. “For a lot of women, they also haven’t started families. It is just too early for many women for that to be a factor and for the disparity to be that big."

The report, which analyzed information provided by 329 companies employing 13 million people as well as survey responses from nearly 70,000 employees, also discovered that awareness of the issue is limited. Some 62 percent of men and 54 percent of women believe that women are well represented in entry-level manager positions. Companies that are aware of the issue are setting targets for the representation of women in first-level management as well as making sure evaluation criteria to getting promoted is very clear.

Yet the real ways to help women early on in their careers may be more nuanced than establishing formal policies and procedures. Microaggressions — whether it’s having your judgement second guessed or being mistaken for someone more junior in your career — impact women far more than men in the workplace. Workers who experience microaggressions are three times more likely to consider leaving their jobs. That means that if unaddressed, more women could be self-selecting themselves out of management.

American companies are making slow progress in getting more women into the C-Suite. Today 44 percent of companies have three or more women in their C-suite, an uptick from 29 percent in 2015. But researchers wonder if the best practices corporations are implementing to make that progress at the executive levels are missing lower down the corporate ladder. 

“When we think about organizational change, there are always break points and fall offs with what the top leadership is doing and getting that to the first-line or entry level manager,” said Yee. “There is an execution gap.”  

Similar research by LinkedIn supports that fewer women are making it into leadership positions. But there is one bright spot: The few women who do make it get there faster than their male colleagues. Across the United States, India, Germany, Italy, and Norway, women need nearly a year and a half less to reach leadership levels than their male colleagues, according to LinkedIn.

Now I want to hear from you: What was your experience trying to get that first promotion into management? Let me know in the comments below using #WorkingTogether

What’s Working

JOIN US LIVE. Many women take a break in the middle of their career to raise a family or for other reasons and not helping them re-enter the workforce later on is costing corporations millions. Join reacHIRE CEO Addie Swartz and I on Wednesday at 12 E.T. to discuss how more employers can reactivate a critical part of the workforce. [Watch the stream here]

‘How quickly can we get there’ This Vanity Fair profile of Glossier Founder Emily Weiss — which highlights her unapologetic ambition to build a massive company — is worth a full read. My big takeaway: The path to success in your career is rarely linear. [Vanity Fair]

Machine-learning for good. The Geena Davis Institute announced a new tool tool that leverages artificial intelligence to pick up on unconscious gender bias in film and television scripts. The tool, which Disney will soon implement, can determine the percentages of characters that are diverse in one way or another. [The Guardian] 

What Needs Work

Don’t throw the office birthday party. When it comes to tasks like taking notes during meetings or planning social activities at work, 55 percent of women said they do more of this “office housework” than their co-workers of both genders. The problem? This work is rarely rewarded and can even derail workers from focusing on what really matters on the job. [WSJ]  

It's not us, it's you. Efforts within tech companies to recruit and retain female talent often focuses on actions individuals can take like mandatory unconscious bias trainings and mentoring programs for women. But new research supports that companies should take a more organizational report to the problem through things like broadening recruiting efforts and making promotion criteria clear. [HBR]

Who’s Pushing Us Forward

What topics do you want to discuss next week? Let me know in the comments below using #WorkingTogether