The Broken Rung

The first step up to manager is the biggest obstacle that women face on the path to leadership.

The “broken rung” refers to the hurdles keeping women from advancing at the start of the corporate ladder. A systemic barrier to gender parity, that shows that the step up to manager is one of the biggest obstacles women face at work.

In the fifth edition of McKinsey and Lean In’s Women in the Workplace report, one of the key findings was that although there’s been progress at the top, the first step up to manager (one of the very first steps on the corporate ladder) is the biggest obstacle that women face on the path to leadership.

Men are far more likely than women to be promoted from their entry-level jobs to manager. For every 100 men who were promoted to management only 68 Latina women were promoted and only 58 Black women.

“These are all workers at the entry level—they haven’t built long track records, they all have similar work experience, and they were all good enough to be hired in the first place. There’s no good reason why so many more men than women are being tapped for promotions, only a bad one—bias.” -- Rachel Thomas, LeanIn.Org's president.