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Women face a shaky climb up the corporate ladder. And despite real progress over the past decade when it comes to women in the workplace, they still face significant headwinds.
Women have made “meaningful gains in representation over the past decade,” according to the Women in the Workplace report published today by LeanIn.Org and McKinsey, particularly when it comes to leadership roles. There are 5% more female directors, 7% more VPs, 6% more SVPs, and 12% more women in the C-suite, according to the report.
But women still face all sorts of obstacles in the workplace, and subtle biases are a big problem. About 38% of working women experience comments or interactions that call their competence into question or undermine their leadership, according to the report. That is a stark difference from the 26% of men who say the same. Around 39% of women say they are interrupted or spoken over more than others, compared to 20% of men. And 18% of women say they’ve been mistaken for someone at a much lower level within their organization, compared to 10% of men.
These statistics are lower than they were five years ago, but they’re still grim. And the latest numbers for undermining behavior climb even higher when it comes to women with disabilities, women of color, or women in the LGBTQ+ community.
“Some things have changed, but the day-to-day experience for women has remained alarmingly flat and poor,” says Lareina Yee, a senior partner at McKinsey’s Bay Area office and an author of the report.
Women are also just as likely today as they were five years ago to experience “othering microaggressions.” This includes hearing others express surprise at their language skills, feeling judged by their accent, or getting confused with someone else of the same race and ethnicity. And the women who experience them are 4.5 times more likely to think their gender will make it harder to advance in their careers, 4.2 more likely to almost always feel burned out, and 2.7 times more likely to consider leaving the company.
“Think about the mental minefield that that creates when you’re on the receiving end of all of those kind of everyday kind of slights, or even kind of more harmful behaviors. It’s psychologically taxing,” says Rachel Thomas, cofounder and CEO of LeanIn.Org, and an author of the report.
When it comes to confronting the gender bias alive and well in the workplace, the report recommends HR leaders evaluate their current efforts and improve their equity and inclusion practices based on a checklist of “recommended practices” that LeanIn created. They also recommend companies incorporate “emerging practices,” which include mentorship programs for women of color, anonymizing résumés and work samples while hiring, and making gender and racial diversity a strategic priority.
Thomas and Yee also recommend that people leaders have a conversation with the company’s leadership team, double down on their investment in managers, adopt a data-forward culture, and make sure that senior male leaders in particular are modeling positive behavior.
“I think celebrating small wins to keep commitment up and to keep energy up is important,” says Thomas. “So if you roll out a new assessment tool, celebrate that. If you roll out a new training, celebrate that.”
Azure Gilman
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