Women Are Making Big Gains in the C-Suite — But It’s Not as Promising As It Seems

First the good news: Women’s representation has increased at every level across corporate America over the last 10 years, showing what seems to be positive signs of growth and opportunity for women at work.

Now, the sobering news: At the current pace of growth, it’s estimated that women won’t reach parity in corporate America for another 48 years. That’s according to new data from Lean In and McKinsey & Company’s “Women in the Workplace” report, which shows that while these gains are certainly worth celebrating, they are by no means a sign of equity across the pipeline.

Currently, women make up 29% of C-Suite positions in corporate America, up from 17% in 2015. In fact, the C-Suite is where women made the biggest leaps in representation — but those gains didn’t translate down to lower levels. When looking at the SVP and VP level, there was a 6% and 7% gain in women’s representation, respectively, between 2015 and 2024, and at the director, manager, and entry level there was a 5%, 2%, and 3% gain, respectively, over the same time period.

Much of this growth at the top, according to Lean In Co-Founder and CEO Rachel Thomas, is due to both business restructuring decisions and a concentrated effort by some companies to add more women to their leadership board. For example, data shows that at the SVP and VP level, there has been a reduction in some line roles, which are positions with profit and loss responsibility like tech and product, where men are overly represented. Meanwhile in the C-Suite, there has been an increase in staff roles that support the organization, like Chief Human Resource Officers, which women are more likely to fill.

“I want to be clear, we're cheering this on because every woman in leadership has a positive impact on decision-making in an organization,” she says. “But the concern is with the way companies have gone about doing it. A lot of those new staff roles in the C-Suite were filled from the outside, as opposed to promoting women from within.”

According to 2023 data, 40% of C-Suite leaders in their roles last year were outside hires.

Alexis Krivkovich, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, explains that this weakness in the internal promotion pipeline is largely to blame for women’s underrepresentation in senior roles. To fix this, she says companies need to focus on changing the culture of work so that more women stay in the pipeline, as well as doubling down on their commitments to DEI so that more women have opportunities to advance.

Women Are Still Facing Early Career Headwinds

For years, experts have noted that women are almost equally represented in entry level roles, but immediately begin to lose out on promotions to men — a phenomenon dubbed the broken rung, since it derails the career climb for many women. According to Lean In and McKinsey & Company, there hasn’t been much progress. In 2018, for every 100 men promoted to manager, 79 women were promoted. Today, that number has only increased slightly to 81, and it’s even worse for women of color. Only 54 Black women and 65 Latinx women were promoted for every 100 men last year. Lean In and McKinsey & Company note that for Latinx women this is the worst broken rung they’ve seen since they began tracking this data in 2015.

“This promotion is so important because it sets up the whole pipeline of potential future talent,” says Krivkovich. “And if companies are not growing that talent in the beginning, they won't have it nurtured and ready for those senior leader spots — and it’s no surprise that they swing outside to try and find it somewhere else.”

In the C-Suite, women of color hold just 7% of these roles, and Latinx women hold just 1.4%, the most underrepresented of any group.

This slow progress of women’s advancement is primarily linked to the unchecked biases, microaggressions, and ageism women face at work. Today, women say they are no more optimistic about how their gender will impact their career advancement than they were 10 years ago, with 1 in 4 saying it will make it harder and 1 in 3 saying it has already contributed to missed opportunities. For women of color, these obstacles appear even greater as they are less likely than White women to feel like they are getting the necessary support from their manager to advance.

“Women's day to day experiences look alarmingly similar to what they did a decade ago,” says Thomas. “They're more likely to experience comments and actions that undermine their competence, and Black women and women with disabilities and LGBTQIA+ women are still more likely to be on the receiving end of othering and demeaning comments.”

According to data, women who experience three or more microaggressions are 4.2x more likely to feel burned out and 2.7x more likely to consider leaving their company.

Another surprising finding, Thomas notes, is the discovery that half of younger women say they’ve experienced ageism at work. “I think we always thought older women were more likely to experience ageism,” she says. “And for me, that was kind of the last piece of the broken rung story falling into place because we know from 30 years of social science research that we tend to promote men based on potential, and women based on what they've already accomplished. Add age into that, and add that you're early in your career, and it's just not surprising at all that entry-level women are getting disproportionately held back.”

Companies Must Remain Focused on DEI and Advancement Opportunities

Data shows that more companies today have implemented fairer hiring and performance review practices than 10 years ago, and more companies have expanded their employee benefits to better support employees who are parents, caregivers, or dealing with health challenges. But Thomas and Krivkovich note that while these changes are necessary for creating more inclusive workplaces, they should not be viewed as a substitute for investing in DEI efforts and advancement resources for women.

“The good news is the vast majority of companies still say gender and racial diversity is a top priority, but for the first time in a decade we are seeing people pull back,” says Krivkovich. Currently, 78% of companies say gender diversity is a high priority and 69% say racial diversity is a high priority, down from 87% and 77%, respectively, in 2019.

“We see them pulling back on sponsorship and mentorship programs that were tailored for women and women of color, internship programs, recruiting programs that similarly had a focus on women and women of color, when the data shows how badly these are needed to get an equal playing field.”

To move the needle on progress, Lean In and McKinsey & Company suggest companies do the following three things:

1. Evaluate the quality of your employee training: Nine in 10 companies offer allyship and/or bias training. And while data shows that more employees feel like their workplace is inclusive today than it was 10 years ago, challenges still remain with just 34% of women and 19% of men saying they recognize bias against women. To address this issue, experts say companies should go beyond one-off video sessions as they have little to no impact. Instead, companies should focus on in-person or online interactive sessions that provide authentic ways for employees to engage and take actionable steps when biases or microaggressions arise.

2. Reward managers for progress on more than just business goals: Seventy-eight percent of managers say they are expected to do more today, including checking on employee well-being, overseeing employee coaching and development, and providing employee training. But when it comes to manager evaluations, 92% of companies evaluate managers based on hitting business objectives, and just 37% of companies evaluate managers on people management goals like career advancement and team morale. As a result, Krivkovich says, “women say they're disproportionately receiving the feel good components like checking in on their well-being, but not the developmental components such as being coached on their career path or help with new opportunities.” This gap, Krivkovich says, can lead to leaks in a company’s pipeline because if women don’t feel like they are receiving career support from their manager, then they are more likely to quit.

3. Double down on DEI efforts: Despite the challenges of corporate America’s DEI landscape today, Krivkovich says it’s imperative that companies stay committed to their diversity initiatives to see real progress. This includes implementing employee resources groups not just for women, but also for women of color, and maintaining mentorship and sponsorship programs that advance women forward. She explains that in 2020 and 2021 when there was a heightened focus on race and intersectionality, the promotion gap for Black women nearly closed. But today, she says, the focus has shifted and those numbers have drastically dropped.

“The good news underneath this is that when companies focus on diversity you see real change,” she adds. “Our encouragement is that companies be bold and stay the course because this is not about one group winning so another does not. It's about creating the same opportunity for everyone.”