In pandemic-growth cities like Seattle, working women are advancing faster

This is Working Together, a weekly series on professional women and equity in the workplace. Below is the third installment of a three-part series examining how the pandemic has impacted the careers of women. Check out parts one and two.

When Brie Tobin joined Seattle-based software startup Highspot in January 2020, she had little idea of the massive changes that were in store.?

Two months after her start, she was thrown into the world of remote work by the pandemic. And in April the following year, she welcomed her first child, Sawyer, into the world, still working under the challenges of the pandemic.?

None of this slowed Tobin down. She was promoted not once but twice in a 19-month period, going from sales manager to a director-level position. And she received one of those promotions as soon as she returned from maternity leave.

“I knew that Highspot was growing,” said 33-year-old Tobin, about how the sales company grew from nearly 500 to 800 employees since she started. “I knew that there would be an opportunity, and I wanted that opportunity.”?

The pandemic devastated the careers of millions of women in the U.S., particularly working mothers. And the share of women hired into leadership roles stalled in 2020, after years of progress, according to LinkedIn data.?

But some parts of the U.S. managed to weather the pandemic’s storms better than others. And in some cities — Seattle, San Francisco and Fayetteville, Ark. in particular — women like Tobin rose through the ranks rapidly.?

Women's success in cities like Seattle and Austin, Texas comes thanks to several factors, including the unanticipated dynamics of the COVID-19 economy, the kinds of employers these places have attracted over the years and the progressive gender policies these regions have embraced.?

The COVID-19 economy has been fickle, rewarding sectors like tech — and any firm that dealt with online retail — handsomely, while leaving other portions of the economy floundering.?

Tobin’s employer, Highspot, was among many Seattle-based tech companies that managed to grow rapidly during the pandemic. The software firm secured $248 million in Series F funding in January of this year, valuing the company at $3.5 billion.?

And perhaps no other company best captures the lopsided fortunes of the pandemic economy than Amazon, Seattle’s largest employer. The retail giant saw profits jump by 220% during the pandemic, as the world shifted to online shopping.?

Software and IT, one of Seattle’s core sectors, promoted women at the fastest clip among all other industries in the region in 2021, according to LinkedIn data.?

“High-growth markets are just more progressive,” said LeanIn CEO and Co-Founder Rachel Schall Thomas. “Many of the organizations there are more advanced with their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts … and they have been on the journey to advance women longer.”?

Fixing many ‘broken rungs’

Since 2016, LeanIn and McKinsey have studied the career advancement of female professionals across the country. Over the last six years, a clear trend has emerged: Women are elevated to the manager level at far lower rates than men, making it more challenging for companies to promote women to even more senior levels. LeanIn calls this essential step on women’s career journeys “the broken rung.”?

Out of all major cities in the country, Seattle is doing the best job at bridging this critical segment of the gender promotion gap, with women who work in the city rising to the manager level at 80% above the national average rate for females.

The pandemic — and its rapid shift to remote work as the norm — has likely aided the Emerald City and its women. Pre-pandemic, choosing to work at a regional outpost of a multinational with headquarters in New York, L.A. or San Francisco might have been considered a career risk. That may not be the case any longer.?

“We are seeing our people in Seattle are having greater opportunities than just working with our clients in the West region. They are not limited to what’s in their backyard,” said EY Americas & U.S. Diversity, Equity & Inclusiveness Leader Leslie Patterson. “That opens up a wealth of opportunities.”

Professional services firm EY doesn’t track the gender balance in promotions to the manager level. But data on the situation further up the company org chart hints at progress: Between 2015 and 2020, women’s representation at the partner or principal level at EY in the U.S. grew from 21% to 26%.?

Beyond the shift to remote work, women in Seattle have likely benefited from concerted efforts by area employers to bridge the promotion gap. In June 2021, Amazon launched its first returnship program aimed at helping professionals who have been out of the workforce for at least one year restart their careers.?

The program aims, in part, to address one of the most formidable barriers to women’s career advancement: Gaps in experience due to caretaking responsibilities. Over 85% of the hires into Amazon’s 16-week program are women, according to program lead Alex Mooney. And of the 100 or so graduates, 90% have converted to full time roles at the company.?

Amazon aims to bring 1,000 professionals through the program over the coming years. And while Mooney says it’s too soon to say if the program is helping get more women into leadership positions, he said it's a key measure the tech giant will be tracking.

“We are having discussions with teams that have leadership development programs, so if the returner chooses to go full-time, they help them not just restart their careers, but accelerate them,” he said.

On the cutting edge?

Seattle women’s progress isn’t only about tech, local residents argue. The city’s culture has also played a part.?

The city boasts a highly educated workforce, a strong base of women-owned businesses and progressive policies around issues like parental leave, making it an attractive place for aspiring women leaders. Seattle adopted a paid parental leave policy for its city employees three years before New York City and a year before San Francisco.

“It’s an area that has always been pretty progressive and on the cutting edge of things,” says Alanna Imbach, founder of a co-working space in Poulsbo, Wash., which sits just outside of Seattle.

Imbach grew up in Poulsbo, but left Washington early in her career for jobs in New York City and Geneva, Switzerland. But after she became pregnant with twins, she and her husband decided to move back home. Now that the world of work is adopting more hybrid models, she suspects more women who grew up in the area will opt to stay for the long haul.?

Suzanne Weller has been a leadership coach and consultant in Seattle since 2018. While she sees clients globally, she says her female clients in Seattle, in some respects, seem more confident.

“We're seeing women stepping up and having courageous conversations about their careers and, hopefully, organizations are encouraging them to do so,” said Weller, who is also co-president of the Seattle chapter of Ellevate Network, the largest community of women at work.?

Highspot’s Tobin is among those Seattle women who are speaking up. Prior to going on maternity leave, she went through the startup’s parental leave policy and saw room for improvement. She worked with Highspot’s chief people officer to extend the company’s paid leave to 18 weeks for both mothers and fathers.?

“You could perceive that conversation not going well or being met with, ‘That’s a lot of change, I don’t know if we can do that,’” Tobin said. “Instead, I was met with, ‘Wow, a policy that served us then doesn’t serve us now.’ It was so refreshing.”?

METHODOLOGY: The data included in this article, which is part of a special report on the state of female professionals in the U.S., was gathered by LinkedIn's Economic Graph Research and Insights team. Promotion rate reflects the number of LinkedIn members in the U.S. who added a new higher-seniority position at the same employer to their profile in a particular year divided by the total number of members with an active position in that year. Gender identity isn’t binary and we recognize that some LinkedIn members identify beyond the traditional gender constructs of “male” and “female.” If not explicitly self-identified, we have inferred the gender of members included in this analysis by classifying their first names as either male or female or by pronouns used on their LinkedIn profiles. Members whose gender could not be inferred as either male or female were excluded from this analysis.