A Decade After ‘Lean In,’ Progress for Women Isn’t Trickling Down
Originally published by Vanessa Fuhrmans for the Wall Street Journal
Women hold more of the top jobs in companies than ever before, but they lag behind men on crucial early promotions into management—holding them back from greater power at work.
That’s one of the central findings of a new, 10-year study of the roles and promotion rates of millions of women and men at major North American companies. After all the public efforts to advance women at work, most C-suite promotions put women in positions, like human-resources and marketing, that don’t lead to the CEO job. Now as company programs designed to diversify workforces face questions about fairness, sustaining the progress could get tougher.
The share of women in the lowest—and much larger—managerial ranks has grown by just 2 percentage points from a decade ago, to 39% from 37%, and slightly more among middle managers, according to researchers at McKinsey and LeanIn.Org, the nonprofit founded by former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg.
Their study, based on the workforce data of more than 1,000 companies since 2015, marks the biggest ongoing effort to measure women’s advancement inside big companies. The findings cast doubt over whether companies can build on those uneven gains, especially as they retreat from some of the measures they implemented in recent years to narrow the gender gap.
“The ability to grow talent from the entry-level up to senior leadership is one of the most fundamental challenges companies still haven’t gotten their hands around,” said Lareina Yee, a senior partner at McKinsey.
The number of employers who said gender diversity was a high priority fell to 78% this year from 87% in 2019, according to the study—consistent with a broader pushback against corporate diversity programs. Gender-focused recruiting initiatives fell by nearly a third from 2022. So did the share of companies offering sponsorship programs aimed at helping rising female talent find senior executives who can champion them for bigger roles.
Research shows those sponsorship opportunities for women make a big difference, Yee says. With companies backtracking, she asks: “How do you think that’s going to go?”