Women held nearly 30 percent of C-suite roles at participating U.S. companies in 2024 — the highest level the Women in the Workplace research has recorded — while their share of first-level manager positions stayed at roughly 38 percent, barely changed in a decade, per the tenth-annual report by McKinsey and LeanIn.Org, published October 2024 and based on survey data covering more than 10 million employees. The finding that matters for careers: the top of the pipeline improved; the bottom of it did not. Both facts come from the same dataset.
The context other coverage skipped: the report also documents the mechanism it has flagged for years — the "broken rung," its term for the first promotion to manager, where women account for a disproportionate share of the shortfall. With roughly 87 women promoted to manager for every 100 men, per the 2024 report's own figures, every gain above that rung is being built on a base that is not widening. The report attributes C-suite movement substantially to companies adding female-titled senior roles, chief people and administrative officers among them, rather than to promotion flows through the pipeline.
Why it matters for women building careers
Because the first promotion is where the data says the leverage is. The report's own framing — that fixing the broken rung would change every layer above it — is arithmetic, not slogan. What the report does not establish: cause. Its data is company-supplied, participation skews toward large employers that volunteer, and the report itself notes its findings describe participating organizations, not the whole economy. The pattern is documented. The explanation is contested. That is the honest state of the evidence, and it is the one this publication reports.
For more context, read Readout from US/UK leadership meeting.