Women are as ambitious as ever, with new-found flexibility in the wake of the pandemic helping them to pursue their career goals, research from McKinsey & Company has revealed.
The latest Women in the Workplace report, produced by LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company, also shows that women’s representation in the C-suite has increased substantially. However it does confirm that progress is lagging in the middle of the corporate pipeline, with women with marginalised identities continuing to be significantly underrepresented at all levels.
The research is the largest study of women working in corporate America and Canada, with 276 participating organisations and 27,000 people surveyed.
The good news is that at every stage of the corporate pipeline, women are just as ambitious as men, and more ambitious than they were before the pandemic.
The research shows that young women are especially ambitious, with nine in 10 wanting to be promoted to the next level in their career and 3 in 4 aspiring to become senior leaders. Women of colour are more ambitious than white women, with a massive 96 per cent noting their career is important to them, and 88 per cent looking for a promotion.
Flexible working options are also fuelling women’s ambitions, with women who work hybrid or remotely being just as ambitious as women and men who attend a workplace.
“One in 5 women say flexibility has helped them stay at their organisation or avoid reducing their hours. A large number of women who work hybrid or remotely point to feeling less fatigued and burned out as a primary benefit,” the report notes.
“A majority of women report having more focused time to get their work done when they work remotely.”
Since 2015, the number of women in the C-suite has increased from 17 to 28 percent, while the representation of women at the vice president and senior vice president levels has also improved.
‘The broken rung’
The report also challenges the notion of the “glass ceiling” being the biggest barrier holding women back, writing instead that there is a “broken rung” in the ladder, causing women to fall behind.
“This year, for every 100 men promoted from entry level to manager, 87 women were promoted,” the report states. “And this gap is trending the wrong way for women of color: this year, 73 women of color were promoted to manager for every 100 men, down from 82 women of color last year. As a result of this broken rung, women fall behind and can’t catch up.”
“I’ve always done every task, every project ahead of schedule and under budget, and I still couldn’t get the promotions I saw my white colleagues getting,” one participant in the research said.
Performance bias is particularly challenging for women in the early stages of their carer and can lead to missing out on that first promotion to the managerial level.
“Because women early in their careers have shorter track records and similar work experiences relative to their men peers, performance bias can especially disadvantage them at the first promotion to manager.”
Microaggressions are harming women
According to LeanIn.org and McKinsey and Co, years of data show clearly that women are much more likely to experience microagressions in the workplace. For example, they are twice as likely to be interrupted and hear comments on their emotional state.
For women with marginalised idenitites, the microagressions are much worse, and have a lasting impact. The report notes that Asian and Black women are seven times more likely than white women to be confused with someone of the same race and ethnicity.
“It’s like I have to act extra happy so I’m not looked at as bitter because I’m a Black woman. And a disabled Black woman at that. If someone says something offensive to me, I have to think about how to respond in a way that does not make me seem like an angry Black woman,” one participant in the research said.
“I’ve gotten mistaken for Chinese,” one Filipino manager said. “People will ask me about some kind of Chinese delicacy assuming that all Asian backgrounds are the same.”
The report shows that roughly 1 in 3 women with disabilities and 1 in 4 LGBTQ+ and Black women have felt invisible or like their accomplishments went unnoticed.