Priya Fielding-Singh, PhD, Senior Manager of Research, Education, and Editorial at Lean In.Org, joined Christine Tao, CEO and Co-Founder of Sounding Board for #LeadershipLive.
LeanIn.Org is committed to advancing leadership, career growth, and inclusion for women in the workplace. The organization conducts in-depth research on the status of women in corporate America, develops programs to help companies address the challenges women face, and supports a global network of Lean In Circles for peer support. Priya, co-author of the annual Women in the Workplace report—a collaborative effort between Lean In and McKinsey & Company—brings invaluable insights into the current landscape of women in corporate roles.
Below are some highlights from their conversation.
Gains for Women in the Workplace
Companies have made significant strides within the past decade in providing benefits and enacting policies that help promote equity and diversity within the workplace. Workplace flexibility and parental leave have helped remove barriers for women and underrepresented groups. There’s also been an increased focus on inclusion, with nearly all companies offering bias or allyship training.
There has also been meaningful progress in the representation of women in leadership positions, with 29% of C-suite leaders being women in 2023, up from 17% in 2015.
The Fragility of Progress
While progress has been made, looking deeper into the data, Priya says that this progress is extremely fragile.
For example, although there are more women in the C-suite, often these roles are staff roles — such as HR, IT, or legal — and not positions with responsibilities affecting loss or profits for the company. “That’s not a sustainable or viable path to parity, because companies can’t keep adding new roles and filling them with women,” says Priya. “They have to shift the distribution of roles for women.”
The distribution of C-suite roles for women is not equal for all women either. Only 7% of C Suite leaders today are women of color compared white women who hold 22%.
Barriers for women still exist even below the C-suite. Despite making up over half of college graduates, women account for less than half of entry level positions. Priya reports that the “Broken Rung” — where women are passed over for promotions early on in their careers — still persists as well, particularly for Latinas and Black women.
Women continue to experience bias, microaggressions, and sexual harassment at alarming rates, similar to levels seen five to ten years ago. Black and Latina women, as well as LGBTQ+ women and women with disabilities, face higher levels of workplace bias and exclusion.
According to the Women in the Workplace report, it could take over 20 years for white women to achieve parity in senior leadership and almost 50 years for all women.
Recommendations for Better Representation
Alarmingly, corporate commitment to gender and racial diversity is declining. Companies are not as focused on programs that support career development for women or specific initiatives to foster diversity, which is critical to sustaining progress.
“There’s clear evidence that companies need to be doing more, they need to be taking a really holistic approach to this,” says Priya. Reasearch-based promotion policies, biases reminders, and thoughtful employee benefits can all help remove barriers, but few companies incorporate all three recommendations.
