The conversation about women in leadership has long focused on the glass ceiling — the invisible barrier that prevents women from reaching the very top. But the data tells a more precise story: the biggest gender gap in the corporate pipeline occurs not at the boardroom door, but at the first promotion to manager. Fix that broken rung and you change everything upstream of it.
The Numbers: Where Women Stand in Leadership (2025)
According to the Lean In and McKinsey Women in the Workplace 2025 report — the most comprehensive annual study of women in corporate America — the state of women's leadership looks like this:
The critical figure: for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 93 women are promoted. For Black women, only 60 are promoted to manager for every 100 men. This is the broken rung — and once it's missed, the entire career trajectory shifts.
"If companies fixed the broken rung and promoted women to manager at the same rate as men, we would add one million more women to management in corporate America over the next five years."
— Women in the Workplace 2025, Lean In / McKinsey & CompanyWhy the Broken Rung Exists
The first management promotion is where several biases converge simultaneously:
- Affinity bias: Managers — predominantly male — tend to promote people who remind them of themselves. At the critical first-promotion stage, this systematically advantages men.
- Performance standards: Research shows women are judged more on past performance, men more on potential. At early career stages where track records are shorter, this disadvantages women.
- Visibility: Women receive less access to high-visibility projects, sponsorship from senior leaders, and informal networking — all of which are disproportionately important for promotion decisions.
- The double bind: Women leaders are judged as either competent or likeable but rarely both. When women demonstrate the assertiveness associated with leadership, they face backlash that men don't. This "think leader, think male" bias is well-documented and persistent.
The Burnout Burden
The 2025 Women in the Workplace report found that 6 in 10 senior women report frequent burnout — compared to half of men at the same level. Women in leadership carry a disproportionate burden of "office housework" (administrative tasks, note-taking, planning), emotional labour within teams, and DEI work that is rarely compensated or credited. Senior women who take on more DEI responsibility receive no measurable career benefit for doing so; senior men who do are promoted faster.
What Organisations That Get This Right Actually Do
- Track promotion rates by gender and race at every level — and hold managers accountable for gaps
- Blind CV screening and structured interviews that reduce affinity bias at the hiring and early-promotion stage
- Formal sponsorship programmes that connect high-potential women with senior advocates who actively advocate for their advancement
- Paid parental leave for all genders — to normalise caregiving as not just a women's issue
- Audit "office housework" distribution and explicitly reward DEI work in performance reviews
- Salary transparency — pay gaps are harder to sustain when everyone can see them
For the legal framework on workplace discrimination, see our analysis of Women's Workplace Rights. For the pay gap data, see The Gender Pay Gap in 2025.
Frequently Asked Questions
The broken rung refers to the gap at the first step up to manager — where women are promoted at lower rates than men. For every 100 men promoted to manager, only 93 women are, and just 60 Black women. Because so many women miss this first promotion, they are permanently underrepresented in every level above it. Fixing the broken rung would add more women to management than any other single intervention.
According to the 2025 Women in the Workplace report, women hold approximately 28% of C-suite positions, 33% of SVP roles, 38% of VP roles, and 42% of director roles. Despite comprising 48% of entry-level employees, women's representation falls at every step up the ladder. Progress at the C-suite has been modest — up from approximately 17% in 2015.
The 2025 data shows 6 in 10 senior women experience frequent burnout — significantly higher than men at the same level. Women in leadership disproportionately carry "office housework," emotional labour, and unpaid DEI work. They face a persistent double bind — judged as either competent or likeable but rarely both — and receive less credit for equivalent performance. Many leave not because they lack ambition but because the conditions are actively hostile.
The glass ceiling is the metaphor for the invisible barrier that prevents women from reaching the highest levels of organisations. While real, research now shows that the more consequential barrier is the "broken rung" — the gap at the first management promotion — because it prevents women from ever entering the pipeline to senior leadership. Fixing the glass ceiling without fixing the broken rung would help very few women.