Over the past decade, women’s representation has increased at every level of corporate management. Most notably, women today make up 29 percent of C-suite positions, compared with just 17 percent in 2015. But progress has been much slower earlier in the pipeline, at the entry and manager levels.

However, the corporate pipeline is not as healthy as the numbers suggest. Women remain underrepresented across the pipeline, a gender gap that persists regardless of race and ethnicity. Simply put, men outnumber women at every level.

What’s more, women continue to face barriers at the beginning of the pipeline. They remain less likely than men to be hired into entry-level roles, which leaves them underrepresented from the start. Then, women are far less likely than men to attain their very first promotion to a manager role—a situation that’s not improving.

In 2018, for every 100 men who received their first promotion to manager in 2018, 79 women were promoted; this year, just 81 women were. Because of this “broken rung” in the corporate ladder, men significantly outnumber women at the manager level, making it incredibly difficult for companies to support sustained progress at more senior levels. This phenomenon is even worse for women of colour, who represent only 7 percent of current C-suite positions—just a four-percentage-point increase since 2017.

The ‘broken rung’ remains a significant barrier to women’s advancement, especially for women of colour.

For every 100 men promoted to manager, 89 White women were promoted in 2024.

Asian women have experienced the greatest improvements in the broken rung but encounter significant hurdles later in the pipeline.

Women have made modest but meaningful gains at the vice president and senior-vice-president levels since 2018, but their progress is more fragile than it appears. The main driver of women’s increased representation was a reduction in the number of line roles (that is, positions with profit-and-loss responsibility, a focus on the company’s core operations, or both), which disproportionately affected men given that they hold more of these positions. In the C-suite, women’s progress was even less sustainable.

While the reduction of line roles was still a factor, the primary reason women’s representation increased was because companies, on average, added staff roles—that is, positions in support functions, such as human resources, legal, and IT—and hired women into these new positions. Since companies cannot add new staff roles indefinitely, this is not a viable path to parity.

At the current pace of progress, it would take 22 years for White women to reach parity and it would take more than twice as long for women of colour. Put another way, it would take 48 years for the representation of White women and women of colour in senior leadership to reflect their share of the US population; this is true parity for all women.

To achieve this, companies will need to maintain their current rate of progress, which means addressing weak spots in their pipelines: by finally fixing the broken rung, investing more resources in developing women leaders, and holding themselves accountable for more substantive progress in senior-leadership roles.

Company actions: There is still critical work to do

Over the past decade, companies have taken steps to support the advancement of women and make the workplace more equitable. And employees recognise this: a majority think women have more opportunities to advance and point to companies’ increased efforts to make the workplace more equitable.

One point of progress is that today, almost all surveyed companies provide critical support for employees who are parents, caregivers, or managing health challenges—benefits that link to higher rates of happiness and employee retention. Benefits such as these are especially helpful to women, who are more likely than men to have caregiving responsibilities.

Workplace flexibility is another benefit that has expanded significantly in the past decade. Mostly in response to the pandemic, companies dramatically increased their hybrid and remote-work options. Eight in ten employees say flexibility has improved over the past ten years, and employees consistently point to greater productivity and reduced burnout as primary benefits. Flexibility is especially important to women, who report having more focused time to work when working remotely.

Companies are also doing more to debias hiring practices and performance reviews but need to go further. When we look at five core practices for debiasing—developing clear evaluation criteria for hiring, before candidates are considered; offering bias training for hiring evaluators; aspiring to have diverse slates of similarly qualified candidates for open positions; developing clear evaluation criteria for performance reviews; and sending reminders to avoid bias during reviews—just one in four surveyed companies have adopted all of them. And the companies that have implemented the full array of practices tend to make the greatest strides in advancing women.

At the same time, companies have scaled back programs designed to advance women. While women face distinct barriers that these programs can help address, fewer companies say gender and racial diversity are priorities for the organisation. Companies are reporting declines in career development, mentorship, and sponsorship programs geared toward women, as well as recruiting and internship programs focused on women.

Relatively few companies track these programs’ outcomes, and in all cases, companies are investing in fewer programs designed to advance women of colour.

Increasing practices include managers promote employees’ contributions to others (44% in 2017 to 64% in 2024), managers check in on your general well-being (68% to 82%), remote/hybrid work options (76% to 92%), clear and specific evaluation criteria are established before any candidates are considered during hiring process (72% to 76%), and there are clear and consistent criteria for evaluating performance (72% to 80%).

While companies are setting the right priorities, these priorities are not translating into manager action. Career advancement has long been a core expectation of managers, and now more companies are also asking managers to foster a culture of inclusion and employee well-being, which is critically important to organisational health.

When managers invest in all of these areas, employees are less burned out, happier in their roles, and less likely to consider leaving their organizations. However, despite increased trainings for managers on these priorities, they are by and large not translating into better manager performance.

Beyond the manager level, companies are doing more to activate employees as agents of change. Nearly all companies, for instance, offer bias or allyship training. But the increase in training programs does not appear to be translating into greater awareness or action. Employees are not markedly more likely to recognize bias against women or act as allies to women of colour.

For example, 28 percent of women today recognise microaggressions comments and actions that undermine their credibility and leadership skills—against other women, nearly the same as the 33 percent in 2019, though still larger than the 11 percent of men who recognise microaggressions today.

While companies have stepped up in some ways, progress has been uneven, and there are clear signs that more needs to be done. Employees universally agree that there has been less progress in how organisations handle microaggressions. And men are far more optimistic than women about how women’s opportunities have improved over the past decade.

The employee experience: Women’s experiences at work have not improved

Despite an increase in representation at work, as well as expanded company efforts, the workplace has not gotten much better for women. Women today are no more optimistic than in the past about their gender’s impact on career advancement, even as they remain highly ambitious—and just as ambitious as men. For women of colour, the obstacles feel even more insurmountable. Compared with six years ago, Asian, Black, and Latina women are more likely in 2024 to perceive their race as an obstacle to advancement.

“I’ve seen folks get promoted, and it was decided by who you know, who you hang with, and what you have in common. The fact still remains: like people like people. If you have similar characteristics to someone, unfortunately, it will lead to benefits that I’m just not going to get.”

Women’s concerns stem from what they’re up against in their day-to-day work. Women, and particularly women of colour, are not getting enough support from their managers. Managers play a central role in women’s career advancement and daily work experiences, yet less than half of women report getting their managers’ help to advance or navigate work challenges. Women of colour receive even less of this support than White women do. Given that employees with consistent manager support are more likely to be promoted, this very likely disadvantages women of colour.

Conventional wisdom suggests that ageism, or unfair treatment based on a person’s age, predominantly affects older workers. In reality, it is most pronounced for young women. About half of women under 30 say their age played a role in missing out on opportunities at work, and they are almost twice as likely as younger men to field unwanted comments about their age.

What’s more, women continue to confront microaggressions as often today as several years ago . Women, especially LGBTQ+ women and women with disabilities, remain more likely than men to experience microaggressions, which make it harder for women to speak up, take risks, and raise concerns at work.

Compared with five years ago, women today are just as likely to experience “othering” microaggressions, which can erode a sense of belonging and make it harder for individuals to bring their whole selves to work. Again, LGBTQ+ women and women with disabilities report these demeaning interactions at the highest rates.

Women who experience them are more likely to feel burned out and to consider quitting their jobs and less likely to view their workplaces as equitable. By leaving microaggressions unchecked, companies risk losing talented employees and missing out on everything these women have to offer.

At the same time, inequity persists in the home as well. Four in ten women with partners say they are responsible for most or all of the household work, a number that has grown since 2016.

By contrast, far more men over the same period say they share household responsibilities equally with partners, suggesting a growing gap in how women and men perceive their contributions at home. On top of this, younger women report doing the same amount of housework as older women, which also signals a lack of progress.