Closing the Gap

How have women in the workplace fared over the past decade?

According to a comprehensive new report from Lean In and 麦肯锡 , we’ve made some big strides: Significantly more women occupy every step of the corporate ladder —?from entry-level workers to C-suite execs —?than they did 10 years ago.

But at the same time, the authors of the study estimate that it’ll take nearly 50 years until we reach parity in the boardroom.?

“Put another way, it will take two generations for the representation of women in senior leadership to reflect the population,” Alexis Krivkovich , a senior partner at McKinsey who helped conduct the survey, tells us.

For the past decade, LeanIn and McKinsey have teamed up to measure women’s representation in corporate America and the barriers they face in the workplace. This year, they surveyed 15,000 employees from 281 organizations about their experiences, their priorities, their outlook on their careers, and more.

Here’s what they found in two graphs:

Women are gaining ground in the C-suite

• Women now hold 29 percent of executive positions, compared to just 17 percent in 2015.?
• White women occupy a larger share of those seats (22 percent), compared to women of color (7 percent).

The "broken rung" remains broken

Women still lag behind men when it comes to getting promoted into management positions —?a phenomenon known as the “broken rung.” In 2018, for every 100 men who got a title bump, there were 79 women promoted. Today, it’s 81 women for every 100 men.

• The promotion rates are much lower for Black women (54 per 100 men promoted) than for white women (89 for every 100 men) and Asian women (who notched an almost-equal 99 promotions for every 100 for men).
• Latinas also saw a sharp decrease in first promotions. In 2023, they were promoted at a level of 76 per 100 men; this year, that dropped to 65 per 100 men.

Next steps

The corporate world has made important progress when it comes to supporting women at work. For instance, almost all of the companies surveyed provide some form of childcare or caregiver benefits. And many of them offer hybrid and remote-work options, which is especially important for women, because —?let’s face it —?we’re still the ones shouldering the majority of the housework.

But the authors of the report also noticed that corporations seem to be scaling back programs that were designed to help women advance.?

“We need companies to stay ambitious and committed to the important work they have started,” Krivkovich says. “That starts with companies rekindling their commitments to equity and fairness that have gotten us this far.”

The team at LeanIn and McKinsey devised a best practices checklist with more helpful insights that they hope corporations will consider — because half a century is far too long a wait for gender equality.

Recommended reading

We asked Alison Fragale , a U.N.C. Chapel Hill professor and the author of one of our recent favorites, Likeable Badass , for a book she thinks working women should crack open.

She suggested two great titles: First is The Power Code by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman , two veteran journalists who present a compelling guide for women looking to maximize their impact in the office. Then there’s The No Club from Linda Babcock , Brenda Peyser , Lise Vesterlund , and Laurie Weingart , which (as its name suggests) is about how to say no to the grunt work that women are often saddled with.

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