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Women in the Workforce - Fixing the "Broken Rung"

A five-year McKinsey study reveals a focus on culture, diversity, and even automation as ways to help advance women’s careers across all industries, including manufacturing.

Women in the Workplace
According to a McKinsey report: The broken rung results in more women getting stuck at the entry level and fewer women becoming managers.
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In 2018, women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median usual weekly earnings that were 81% of the earnings of male full-time wage and salary workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So here we are in 2020, and women in corporate America still face a gender wage gap, making 79 cents for every dollar men make.

In an effort to understand what’s going on, McKinsey Global Institute and LeanIn.Org set out on an exhaustive research project that began five years ago with updates each year. Over the years, close to 600 companies have participated in the study and more than a quarter of a million people were surveyed on work experiences. This past year, the Women in the Workplace 2019 report is based on information from 329 organizations. The research includes a survey of more than 68,500 employees to understand day-to-day work experiences.

Here’s what they found: Progress is being made, specifically for women in leadership positions. In the C-suite, representation of women has increased from 17% to 21% since 2015. Still, women—and particularly women of color—are underrepresented at every level.  And, it is not the “glass ceiling” that is preventing women from rising through the ranks, rather, it is the “broken rung” effect.

According to the report: “Conventional wisdom says that women hit a glass ceiling as they advance that prevents them from reaching senior leadership positions. In reality, the biggest obstacle that women face is the first step up to manager, or the broken rung. The broken rung results in more women getting stuck at the entry level and fewer women becoming managers. As a result, there are significantly fewer women to advance to higher levels. To get to gender parity across the entire pipeline, companies must fix the broken rung.”

 People may say it’s a two-way street and that women are looking for more work/life balance and therefore are satisfied with lower-level jobs. But the data points to a very different conclusion.

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