Nearly 80% of the gender pay gap in the United States is driven by women having “flatter” work experience trajectories compared to men, says a report by the McKinsey Global Institute, or MGI.
The flat work experience trajectories result in a 27% pay difference between men and women over a 10-year career period and account for an estimated $500,000 loss in pay over the career of the average woman professional. Based on an analysis of 86,000 real-life online career histories, the report, titled “Tough trade-offs: How time and career choices shape the gender pay gap,” examines how individual choices people make about the work they do and how much work they do has long-term effects on their career arcs.
The report finds that one-third of the pay gap is attributed to women working fewer hours, taking longer breaks between jobs, and taking on more part-time roles than men. The other two-thirds is because women opt for lower-paying roles with less competition and fewer full-time requirements than men. This is true even though women experience a similar number of role changes as men per decade worked and take on new skills as required by those new roles, known as a “skill distance.” These lower-paying occupations, or “shrinking occupations,” such as office support and production work, are usually roles less likely to grow in demand, the report says.
However, the U.S. economy and its workforce requirements are changing rapidly. Technology will impact the nature of work, especially in the fields more likely to grow, over the next 5-10 years, the report says. Occupations expected to grow between now and 2030 include STEM, health care, business, and law professions. The report notes that historically, women have moved into these growing occupations at a slower pace than men. This translates to roughly three-fourths of men entering growing professions versus two-thirds of women professionals, suggesting that growing professions might be constrained for talent. If this trend continues, the overall gender pay gap may remain at current levels.
One example from the tech sector traces the career journeys of men and women who entered the workforce as tech professionals. Over a 10-year period, a greater share of women left tech and moved into fields like customer service and other support functions, while men often stayed in tech. Only 6% of women continued as tech managers while 16% of men did. The women who left tech (24%) moved into lower-paying and lower-productivity roles, while the men who stayed in tech (12%) moved into higher productivity roles. (For more information, read “Men Informally Mentor One Another Toward Valued Tech Roles” in SWE Magazine’s State of Women in Engineering 2025 issue.)
“All these choices do end up having implications for talent supply into the vital growing areas of the future,” says Anu Madgavkar, a McKinsey Global Institute partner based in New Jersey and lead researcher of the report. “It merits some thought around, is there something that we can do to re-tilt the balance a little bit more?”
The study correlates these career choices to occupational attributes that the O*Net dataset offers. O*Net is a publicly available database of occupational characteristics and worker requirements across the U.S., and it produces a widely used career assessment tool. (To learn more about the tool, read “Career Assessment Tools Steer Women Out of Engineering” in SWE Magazine’s State of Women in Engineering 2025 issue.)
O*Net highlights two measurable factors that were significant in women’s job preferences. One is the flexibility to choose part-time versus full-time work. Madgavkar says women want work that allows them to balance other priorities, and the shrinking occupations are associated with more ability to do that.
The other factor is the degree of competitive pressure, whether internal within the role or external in the industry. More highly competitive roles are the ones that are growing. It is harder to manage multiple priorities and operate within personal constraints in a job with higher competitive pressure.
The report, however, refers to a set of companies that propelled both men and women into growing fields at a faster pace. McKinsey labeled these companies People+Performance Winners, or P+P Winners, in its 2023 report “Performance through people: Transforming human capital into competitive advantage.” The report says that men and women in such companies moved more often into growing occupations, stayed at their companies longer, and switched roles within their companies more often.
The report shows that there are human resources practices that can enable men and women to move into those growing jobs faster. “Organizational culture matters,” says Madgavkar. “It’s the fabric that surrounds employees and talent. No individual can be successful or highly productive without the right fabric of the organization that enables interactions. It’s about working with other people, collaborating, and having the incentives and opportunities that both allow and push that to happen.”
P+P Winners challenge and empower employees and create growth opportunities for them. Madgavkar says these are not comfortable places where one can coast for decades and feel safe. They value high levels of performance while allowing employees plenty of opportunities to rotate across teams and functions and learn as they go.
Mercedes Gimeno-Segovia is vice president for system architecture at the quantum computing company PsiQuantum, one of 10 organizations cited in McKinsey’s “The State of Organizations” 2023 report as having “an unwavering commitment to their people and the ability to transform in the face of disruption.” She says, “We are all very inquisitive and share one mission, so no detail is too small to be understood. We often cross interfaces between teams to work on projects and help each other.”
Gimeno-Segovia joined PsiQuantum in 2017 as a quantum architect and has been promoted several times. If there’s a project that her team doesn’t technically get evaluated on but is in the company’s “collective interest,” she says, “We’re going to help as much as we can. That’s part of the working culture.”
Madgavkar says establishing an empowering and challenging environment is not necessarily easy. “These are organizational culture transformations that are quite important to accomplish. Maybe all employers can’t do it, but we hope, and we do believe, it’s possible for more of them to at least take on some aspects of this kind of culture.” Transforming an organization should not fall only to human relations but also be a business priority, Madgavkar says. Such companies tend to outperform others in the long run and have more consistent and higher earnings over time, she says, because of their organizational culture.
Jessie Young is a principal engineer at GitLab, another organization featured in McKinsey’s “The State of Organizations” 2023 report and one of the largest fully remote organizations in the world. “Our asynchronous culture means that people can work a schedule that works for them and their team. Our remote environment emphasizes clear documentation, structured collaboration, and transparent communication. This deliberate approach means contributions are valued based on quality and impact.
“During my three-year tenure, I’ve evolved from staff engineer to principal engineer, and I collaborate across multiple engineering teams,” Young says. “I’ve found this culture particularly beneficial because it values thoughtful problem-solving and collaborative decision-making, ultimately leading to better engineering outcomes for everyone.”
P+P Winners don’t necessarily have higher numbers of women among their ranks, but their overall attrition rates are lower for men and women, Madgavkar says. They have practices that make it easier for women to operate freely within the companies, such as employer-assisted child care. “It is possible for anyone, regardless of their scope of business, to emulate some of these practices.”
