Women's presence in senior leadership has grown over the past decade, but the gains have not been evenly spread. In 2024, women held 29 percent of C-suite positions, up from 17 percent in 2015. Yet the pipeline beneath the C-suite has not changed at the same pace, leaving women underrepresented at several stages before they reach the top.
Much of the most detailed data comes from large North American employers. The findings therefore offer an important view of corporate America, but they should not automatically be treated as representative of every region, sector or company size.
What the data shows
LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company's Women in the Workplace study is among the largest of its kind. Its findings show that representation varies significantly across groups and companies.
The gap is wider for women of color, who held 7 percent of C-suite roles, compared with 22 percent for white women. Companies have also made progress at different rates. Top-quartile performers on representation have added an average of seven percentage points in leadership since 2021, while lower performers have recorded more modest and inconsistent gains.
The differences suggest that progress at the top is not occurring at the same pace across the workforce. They also raise a broader question: where does the gap emerge before employees reach the C-suite?
Where the pipeline can narrow
The reasons are not necessarily the same everywhere. Researchers point to several stages of the career path that may affect who eventually reaches senior leadership. These stages do not operate independently. A disadvantage early in a career can reduce the pool of candidates available for later promotions and assignments.
The first step into management: The study's authors describe a "broken rung" between entry-level roles and management. When fewer women make that first move into management, fewer are likely to move into senior positions. The result can be a smaller pipeline of women with the managerial experience typically required for senior roles.
The shape of senior roles: The 2024 report suggests that changes in line roles have been a major driver of progress for women in senior leadership. Operating and business-unit roles can provide experience that organizations often consider when selecting senior executives. A decline in access to those positions can therefore affect advancement later in a career. The issue is not that staff roles lack value, but that organizations may place different weight on different types of experience when making succession decisions.
Ambition: The findings have changed over time. In 2023, women and men at director level showed equal interest in senior leadership roles. The 2025 report found a measurable gap in promotion aspiration for the first time. The finding is notable, but it does not establish why the change occurred. Workplace conditions, changing expectations and other factors may contribute, making it difficult to reduce the issue to differences in ambition alone.
Shifting priorities: Only about half of surveyed companies now describe women's advancement as a high priority, while remote and flexible options have also been reduced. Those changes have generated different interpretations, ranging from concerns about a retreat from earlier commitments to explanations centered on cost pressures and changing business priorities. The available data does not establish a single cause.
What companies are trying
Organizations have used several approaches to address gaps in advancement, but each has limitations.
What traditional approaches still offer
Performance-based promotion and long-tenure development paths remain common. They provide a clear framework and can make promotion decisions easier to explain.
The difficulty is that formal equality in the promotion process does not necessarily mean equal opportunity to build the record being evaluated. Line roles, high-profile projects and other career-building assignments can shape someone's record long before a promotion decision is made.
That distinction matters. Two employees can be judged against the same criteria while having had very different access to the opportunities that helped them meet those criteria.
Some organizations are keeping traditional performance standards while examining how assignments, development opportunities and succession pathways are distributed.
Different readings of the evidence
There is no single explanation for the gap. Some observers focus on organizational structures and resource decisions. Others point to differences between sectors and the time it takes for career pipelines to develop.
The 2025 findings have also drawn different interpretations, including criticism that some companies are making choices that slow women's advancement. Those views do not necessarily rule each other out. The reasons may differ across industries and organizations.
There are measurement limits too. Studies often rely on companies that choose to participate, and definitions of "C-suite" can vary from one organization to another. Those differences make comparisons across companies, sectors and regions harder to interpret and reinforce the need to treat broad trends with caution.
The C-Suite gap starts earlier
The numbers at the top tell only part of the story. Women's representation in the C-suite has increased, but the path leading there remains uneven, particularly for women of color and at earlier stages of a career.
Looking at the pipeline shifts attention from the final promotion to the decisions and opportunities that precede it: who enters management, who gains line experience, who receives high-visibility assignments and who is considered ready for the next role. The traditional career path has not disappeared. But reaching the C-suite is shaped long before the final promotion decision. The composition of senior leadership can reflect years of accumulated differences in access to experience, visibility and advancement, not simply the outcome of a single promotion process.
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