Long before bumping into any “glass ceiling,” many professional women run into obstacles trying to grasp the very first rung of the management ladder—and not, as a new study shows, because they are pausing their careers to raise children.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, many women early in their careers are falling dramatically behind men in promotions, according to new research from management consulting firm McKinsey and Company.
Though women and men enter the workforce in roughly equal numbers, men outnumber women nearly 2 to 1 when reaching the manager jobs that are the bridge to more senior leadership roles. In real numbers, that translates to more than one million women across the U.S. corporate landscape getting left behind their male peers at the entry-level over the next five years, perpetuating a shortage of women in leadership positions.
A growing body of research links greater gender diversity on teams and in management to more innovation and better financial performance. That’s a big reason why more senior leaders at companies—73%—say achieving equality for women in the workplace is a priority, up from 56% four years ago.
Yet fewer than 20% of employers surveyed attributed the gender gap in their own management ranks to women losing the first-time promotion race, the data shows. This is even though for every 100 men promoted or hired into junior management roles, only 72 women are, a ratio that has barely budged from 2015. Read the full story.
