We have spent decades opening doors for women. Why does progress toward leadership equality remain so slow? And what will it take to change that?
I recently came across two studies on the state of women in leadership. One was the 2025 Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey and Lean In. The other was a September 2026 article published by the World Economic Forum, drawing on its latest Global Gender Gap Report.
The numbers were staggering. What struck me, however, was not that I was discovering something new. It was that nearly every finding confirmed something I had already witnessed, experienced, or suspected throughout my years in corporate America.
Women know this is happening. They have been talking about it for decades. And yet there is a peculiar dilemma that comes with being a woman in the corporate world. You cannot keep crying foul. You cannot keep pointing to inequities without wondering whether you will be seen as someone who complains, who cannot compete, or who wants special treatment.
So you hesitate. You want to believe that the system is fair. You want to believe that your work, your competence, your contributions, and your results will eventually speak for themselves.
But what happens when the numbers continue to tell a different story?
Perhaps the more important question is: what will it take to change this, so that 50 years from now our daughters are not having the same conversation?
The numbers tell us something we can no longer ignore
According to the World Economic Forum's September 2026 analysis, progress toward gender parity in leadership has stalled for four consecutive years. At the pace of progress observed in the five years leading up to 2020, the estimated time to close the leadership representation gap was 50 years.
At the more recent pace, that estimate has stretched to 90 years.
Ninety years.
Women make up approximately 46% of entry-level workers globally, yet their representation declines to just 23% in the C-suite. The picture in corporate America is not much more encouraging:
The 2025 Women in the Workplace study found that women hold 29% of C-suite positions, unchanged from the previous year.
The study also highlights what it calls the "broken rung." For every 100 men promoted into their first management position, only 93 women receive the same opportunity. For women of color, that number falls to 74.
Every subsequent promotion draws from a leadership pipeline in which women are already underrepresented. By the time organizations begin looking for their next generation of executives, many capable women have already been left behind.
And then there is the question of ambition.
One of the most interesting findings in the 2025 study was that women reported less interest in promotion than men. At first glance, that might appear to confirm an assumption that women are simply less ambitious. But the research revealed something important: when women and men received the same career support, that ambition gap disappeared.
What we sometimes interpret as a lack of ambition may reflect a lack of opportunity, encouragement, or confidence that advancement is realistically available.
Instead of asking why more women do not aspire to senior leadership, perhaps we should ask what happens along the way that causes some women to reconsider those aspirations.
Who gets an advocate, and who is left to find their own way?
In my experience, senior male leaders often have strong informal networks.
They identify people they believe in, invest time in them, bring them into important conversations, and give them opportunities to develop.
Sometimes these relationships are built over years. A younger colleague becomes a trusted associate, then a partner, and eventually a senior leader. They might meet over drinks, discuss careers outside the office, exchange introductions, or simply become part of the same circle of influence.
I have seen how powerful that can be. And I have often wondered whether women have been equally deliberate about building these relationships.
When I encounter women in senior leadership positions, many are already operating under enormous pressure. They frequently seem to be carrying the burden of constantly proving themselves. Are they finding opportunities to identify and nurture the next generation of women? Are younger women seeking them out? Are there simply too few senior women available to create the same depth of relationships?
I don't know that there is one answer. I also don't believe that women are inherently less capable of building these relationships.
But I wonder whether the workplace culture we have inherited has made it harder for women to sponsor one another. Perhaps we have spent so much time fighting our own way into the room that we have not always had the opportunity, or even the capacity, to bring others along.
The 2025 Women in the Workplace study found that employees with sponsors were promoted at nearly twice the rate of those without them over the preceding two years.
And women, particularly at the earliest career levels, were less likely than men to have sponsors. A mentor can offer advice. A sponsor goes further. A sponsor speaks for you when you are not in the room, puts your name forward, and uses their influence to create opportunities.
How many talented women are doing exceptional work without ever having someone do that for them? And how much of career advancement is determined by the relationships that exist outside formal performance evaluations?
The invisible expectations we carry about leadership
There is another dimension to this discussion that I think we need to examine. It is perhaps harder to articulate because it exists in the realm of human perception, expectations, and the subtle ways in which we judge one another.
Someone recently shared an interesting observation with me about how people choose their leaders. They said that, for many people, the question ultimately comes down to: "Can I have a beer with this person?"
I found that fascinating.
We want leaders we can relate to. People we feel comfortable with. People in whom we recognize something of ourselves. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Relatability is an important quality in leadership.
However, what happens when our image of a relatable leader has been shaped by generations of seeing a particular kind of person in positions of authority?
Do we unconsciously hold women to a different standard?
An ambitious man may be seen as driven. A similarly ambitious woman may be seen as aggressive. A man who asserts himself may be perceived as decisive, while a woman displaying the same behavior risks being labeled difficult or intimidating. Research on women in leadership has documented elements of this double standard, sometimes described as the leadership double bind.
And then there are the expectations we carry about women's personal lives.
Do we judge women's ambition differently depending on whether they are married, have children, or have followed what society considers a traditional path? Does a woman have to demonstrate that she has fulfilled certain social expectations before we become comfortable with her pursuit of power?
These are not easy questions to answer.
I have encountered situations throughout my professional life that have made me reflect on them. Sometimes the judgment is not expressed in words. It is a reaction, a frown, a dismissive comment, or an attitude that communicates disapproval. Any one of these incidents may seem insignificant. You might even question whether you interpreted it correctly.
But consider what happens when these experiences accumulate over a career.
We encourage women to speak up, pursue leadership positions, negotiate, and become more visible. Yet when they begin demonstrating those very behaviors, some discover that being assertive carries an additional social cost. Over time, that can influence whether someone chooses to step forward again. I am not suggesting that women are naturally less assertive than men, or that they should be protected from criticism.
But people respond to the environments in which they operate.
If expressing ambition repeatedly invites negative judgments, some will eventually become more cautious about expressing it. That is part of the cultural conditioning we need to examine. Why should a woman have to calculate how much ambition is socially acceptable before she can pursue a leadership opportunity? Why should she have to choose between being perceived as agreeable and being perceived as capable?
There should be room for a woman who simply enjoys leading, inspiring people, solving problems, and building something meaningful. And she should be judged on how effectively she does those things.
The cost of having a family should not be a career penalty
There is also a biological and societal reality we cannot ignore. Women bear children. For many, pregnancy, childbirth, and the early years of raising a family introduce demands that men do not experience in quite the same way. But biology does not determine who should become a leader.
Society determines how we respond to those realities.
The World Economic Forum reports that women are more than four times as likely as men to take career breaks for full-time parenting, 26.5% compared with 6%. More troubling is what happens afterward.
Its analysis found that men returning from full-time parenting breaks as senior individual contributors were 44% more likely than comparable women to be promoted in their first year back. Three years later, men remained approximately 39% more likely to have progressed.
Why should taking time away to raise a family affect a woman's leadership trajectory differently from a man's?
There are legitimate challenges associated with stepping away from work. But these challenges can be addressed through deliberate career-return programs, better reintegration, transparent advancement criteria, and genuine flexibility. The question is whether we have the will to do so.
And the same question applies to remote work.
The 2025 Women in the Workplace report found that women who work remotely most of the time were far less likely to have been promoted in the last two years than women who work mostly on-site, while men were promoted at similar rates regardless of where they worked.
If flexibility comes at a greater career cost for women, what does that tell us about the assumptions we continue to carry?
We have changed how people work. Have we changed how we judge their commitment and potential?
Have we changed the laws without changing the culture?
Perhaps this is the question that troubles me the most. More than a century has passed since major milestones in the women's rights movement. Women have entered universities, professional occupations, boardrooms, and executive suites in numbers that earlier generations could scarcely have imagined. There has been progress.
Yet the same patterns continue to emerge.
Women enter the workforce in substantial numbers. Their representation declines as seniority increases. Some leave or slow their careers to raise families. Others remain and find themselves repeatedly overlooked. Many work harder, take on more responsibility, and wait for their contributions to be recognized. How many generations have experienced a variation of this story?
I increasingly think this is a societal issue as much as a workplace issue.
Companies are a reflection of the cultures in which they operate. The assumptions we carry about authority, ambition, family responsibilities, leadership, and success do not suddenly disappear when we enter an office.
Research helps explain why these expectations can persist.
The United Nations Development Programme's 2023 Gender Social Norms Index found that nearly nine in ten people worldwide held at least one bias against women across the areas measured. The study found little overall improvement in those attitudes across approximately a decade of comparable data.
The index also found that roughly two in five people believed men made better business executives than women. These attitudes are not confined to one country, culture, or level of economic development.
There is another study I find particularly interesting. In research published in the American Economic Review in 2020, researchers studied young married men in Saudi Arabia and their attitudes toward women working outside the home. They discovered that most privately supported women working, but substantially underestimated how many other men shared that view. When researchers corrected those mistaken perceptions, the men became more willing to help their wives search for jobs. Months later, their wives were more likely to have applied for jobs and attended interviews.
People were making decisions based partly on what they believed others expected of them, even when those expectations did not accurately reflect what others believed.
The same pattern shows up in a very different country. A 2017 study of married working men in Japan found that men overestimated how negatively other men viewed paternity leave. Men who wanted the leave but assumed their colleagues disapproved were less willing to take it than men who assumed their colleagues felt the way they did, even though both groups wanted it equally. At the time, fewer than 3% of eligible Japanese fathers were taking paternity leave, according to the national figures cited by the researchers.
It makes me wonder how often something similar happens in our workplaces. How often do women hold themselves back because they anticipate disapproval that may not actually exist? And how often do people reinforce established behaviors because they assume everyone else believes those behaviors are appropriate?
That is one reason cultural change may be so difficult, even when individual attitudes have begun to evolve.
We can announce a leadership initiative. We can publish impressive statistics about representation. We can celebrate the appointment of a woman to an important position. Those achievements matter. But the real question is what happens to the thousands of women further down the organization.
Are they gaining access to influential networks?
Are they receiving the assignments that prepare them for leadership?
Are senior leaders investing in their futures?
Are we measuring genuine opportunity or simply celebrating the occasional success story?
Culture is shaped by the behaviors that an organization rewards, tolerates, and repeats. If the same informal networks continue to influence decisions, if the same leadership styles continue to receive preferential recognition, and if the same assumptions continue to shape who is considered ready, then changing the policies alone will accomplish only so much.
This is Part 1 of a two-part series. Part 1 looks at what the numbers show and why the pattern keeps repeating. Part 2 is about what fairness should mean, what allyship looks like in practice, and six things we can start doing now. Read Part 2 here: Part 2.
Sources and further reading
World Economic Forum, September 16, 2026. Women's Leadership Is Missing in the Jobs Shaping Tomorrow's Economy, Leaving Economic Opportunity on the Table. Global leadership representation, parental career interruptions and the estimated timeline to parity.
McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org, December 9, 2025. Women in the Workplace 2025. Corporate leadership representation, the broken rung, sponsorship, ambition and career support.
LeanIn.Org, 2025. Women in the Workplace Report. Additional discussion and resources from the joint McKinsey and Lean In research.
United Nations Development Programme, June 12, 2023. 2023 Gender Social Norms Index: Breaking Down Gender Biases. Research examining the persistence of gender biases across societies and generations.
Bursztyn, Leonardo; González, Alessandra L.; and Yanagizawa-Drott, David, October 2020. Misperceived Social Norms: Women Working Outside the Home in Saudi Arabia. American Economic Review, 110(10), 2997–3029. Experimental evidence that correcting misperceptions of social attitudes can influence women's employment decisions and opportunities.
Miyajima, Takeru, and Yamaguchi, Hiroyuki, September 20, 2017. I Want to but I Won't: Pluralistic Ignorance Inhibits Intentions to Take Paternity Leave in Japan. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1508. Evidence that men's misperception of other men's attitudes, not their own attitude, lowers their intention to take paternity leave.
Eagly, Alice H., and Karau, Steven J., 2002. Role Congruity Theory of Prejudice Toward Female Leaders. Psychological Review, 109(3), 573–598. A theoretical framework explaining why expectations about gender roles can conflict with expectations about leadership.
Williams, Melissa J., and Tiedens, Larissa Z., 2016. The Subtle Suspension of Backlash: A Meta-Analysis of Penalties for Women's Implicit and Explicit Dominance Behavior. Psychological Bulletin, 142(2), 165–197. A meta-analysis examining reactions to women's displays of dominance.
