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Given the rise of trends like “lazy girl jobs” and “snail girls,” it may seem like women are losing interest in their careers. But the newest Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey and LeanIn.org, released Thursday, finds that is far from the truth.
It’s one of several myths about women’s experiences at work that the report aims to confront, along with conceptions about flexible work and what truly stands in the way of women’s career advancement.
Based on data from more than 270 companies, input from more than 270 HR leaders, and a survey of over 27,000 individual employees, the report found that women are just as ambitious and invested in their careers as men. In fact, 96% of men and women say they view their careers as important. Young women, in particular, are bucking the “lazy girl jobs” trend, with 97% of those under 30 saying they view their career as important and 93% expressing interest in a promotion.
Separately, contrary to corporate leaders’ insistence that remote work and other flexible arrangements inhibit productivity and leadership development, working remotely, hybrid, or on-site does not affect women’s professional ambitions. Women working fully remotely say they are interested in getting promoted at the same rate as women working on-site (80% and 79%, respectively).
“The data is really clear that women and men benefit from [flexibility], but also that women who want flexibility and want remote [or] hybrid work are as ambitious. That’s really important,” says Sheryl Sandberg, cofounder of LeanIn.org and former Meta COO. “You cannot correlate where you work to ambition. And I think that’s a very common myth.”
Yet employers fail to tap into this ambition, as evidenced by the persistence of a “broken rung” in women’s career ladders. For every 100 men promoted to manager, just 87 women were promoted, unchanged from last year. While women did see advancement in C-suite representation—28% of women are now in the C-suite, up from 17% in 2015—that progress could easily disappear if companies abandon gender equity within their promotion pipelines.
“Those are real gains,” says Alexis Krivkovich, a senior partner at McKinsey. “But that was a decade in the making. And the worry is if we don’t solve the broken rung, the next decade will, in fact, look worse.”
That backsliding may already be here for Black women, especially as companies shirk DEI commitments made in 2020. In 2018 and 2019, 58 Black women were promoted to manager for every 100 men. That share jumped to 82 in 2020 and 96 in 2021. In 2022, it plummeted to just 54 Black women promoted for every 100 men.
But it’s not all bad news. Sixty percent of companies have increased their financial and staffing investments in DEI over the last year, and 73% of HR leaders say DEI is critical to their organization’s future success.
“It’s a mixed bag story, where companies are clearly signaling that DEI is still front and center for them,” says Rachel Thomas, cofounder and CEO of LeanIn.org. “Yet when we look at the experiences of women with traditionally marginalized identities— in terms of how quickly they’re moving through the pipeline, how deeply the broken rung is impacting them, what their day-to-day experiences are—we’re seeing that there are still big boulders to move to really operationalize DEI.”
The report outlines several solutions employers can take, keenly focusing on systemic solutions like analyzing hiring and promotion metrics across gender and race.
Paige McGlauflin
[email protected]
@paidion
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The Women in the Workplace report also found that women experience microaggressions in the office at higher rates than men, such as having their judgment questioned, getting interrupted or spoken over, or receiving comments on their appearance. Women of color, LGBTQ+ women, and women with disabilities often report experiencing these microaggressions at even higher rates.
“There are ways to systematically look through performance reviews, either for buzzwords, like aggressive, like ambitious, like doesn't get along,” says Sandberg. “A lot of this is measurable and trackable.”
Around the Table
A round-up of the most important HR headlines.
- Skilled young professionals are leaving China in droves to escape political oppression, but they’re not coming to the U.S. Why? It’s too hard to obtain a visa. New York Times
- More than 75,000 employees at California health care company Kaiser Permanente began a three-day strike on Wednesday, demanding higher wages and a solution to the company’s staffing shortage. Bloomberg
- A publicly-funded two-year program that teaches Washington high schoolers how to build planes is providing Boeing with needed employees amid labor shortages. Seattle Times
- Year-over-year pay increases for job hoppers fell to 9% in September, according to new ADP data, the lowest increase in more than two years. Yahoo Finance
Watercooler
Everything you need to know from Coins2Day .
Snail’s pace. Thanks to TikTok, the new workplace movement taking over Australian offices is the “snail girl,” who takes her time completing projects and prioritizes work-life balance. —Orianna Rosa Royle
Yellen for AI. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the audience at Coins2Day’s CEO Initiative on Tuesday that AI could significantly boost workplace productivity, making her the latest policymaker to tout the benefits of automation tools. —Leo Schwartz
Hard truth. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son believes AI models that are significantly smarter than humans are less than ten years away. —Chloe Taylor
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