Key Takeaways:
- Women hold just 29% of C-suite roles, despite some improvement, and are underrepresented at all levels.
- Women are promoted at lower rates than men, with the gap worsening — only 81 women received a promotion for every 100 men, and the numbers are even lower for women of color.
- Progress is painfully slow, with gender parity projected to take nearly 50 years overall, as companies scale back diversity efforts.
Women are still underrepresented at every stage of the corporate pipeline, as McKinsey & Company’s latest Women in the Workplace report reveals. The 10th anniversary edition of the report includes insights from 281 organizations, as well as 15,000 employees and 280 HR leaders at these companies.
The results show that the gender gap remains widest at the C-suite level, with women holding just 29% of C-suite positions. Though this percentage has improved from 17% in 2005, progress is slow. Even at entry (48%) and manager (39%) levels, women are underrepresented, setting up the gender gap from the beginning.
Women are also less likely than men to advance in their career, and the situation has worsened in 2024. For every 100 men promoted to manager this year, only 81 women received a promotion (down from 87 in 2023). And this number is significantly lower for Black women (54) and Latinas (65).
With such slow progress, McKinsey estimates it would take almost 50 years to reach gender parity for all women — 22 years for White women and 48 years for women of color.
Other important findings from the report include:
- Within the past several years, companies have deprioritized gender and racial diversity and scaled back sponsorship and mentorship programs tailored to women.
- After a dip in competence-based microaggressions in 2023, women reported that they’re facing a sharp increase in demeaning workplace interactions.
- Top-performing companies are more likely to take actions that create a more equitable workplace, including prioritizing gender and racial diversity, making efforts to reduce bias in hiring and promotional processes, and offering benefits and perks to better support women (e.g., paid sick and family leave, menopause support, and flexible work hours).
