At a “Women on Wednesdays” on-demand presentation sponsored by the nonpartisan Women and Politics Institute (WPI) at American University, Kweilin Ellingrud, a director of the McKinsey Global Institute, revealed a startling truth about women in the workplace. While the “glass ceiling” — the barrier to the executive suite that ambitious and credentialed women run into at the peak of their careers — is real and persistent, a more important factor in women’s career progression may be what happens very early on, when she first puts her foot on the bottom rung of the corporate ladder.
In the presentation held Sept. 10, 2025, Betsy Fischer Martin, executive director of WPI, interviewed Ellingrud about the two decades of research into women and leadership that informs the recently released book, The Broken Rung: When the Career Ladder Breaks for Women – and How They Can Succeed in Spite of It. Ellingrud, Lareina Yee, and Maria del Mar Martinez, all senior partners at McKinsey, are co-authors of the book.
Ellingrud began the conversation by pointing out a paradox of the talent pipeline in the United States: Academic achievement should lead to good jobs and career advancement, but despite decades of outperforming men in school, women are still held back at the first opportunity to move up — at the first rung. “It’s that first promotion to manager that is often missed or delayed for all women,” she said. “And it’s interesting because women are excelling academically in the United States and frankly, in developed countries all around the world. In the United States, women have 59% of college degrees. We enter college at higher rates, and we persist and graduate at higher rates. Women are 70% of valedictorians. We have higher average GPAs. We also earn the majority of master’s degrees and Ph.Ds.”
Yet top performance in school does not yield the expected results in the workplace, Ellingrud explained. “In stark terms, for every 100 men promoted to that first manager level, 81 women overall are promoted. That breaks down to 86 white women, 99 Asian women, 65 Latina women, and 54 Black women. The promotion rate for men across all races is roughly double the promotion rate for Black women at that first managerial promotion level. That’s the broken rung that we are talking about — the first missed or delayed promotion.”
Choices matter
Ellingrud, whose areas of research expertise are gender and racial equality, the future of work, and economic competitiveness, also discussed the persistent gender pay gap. “We did some research globally and then did a deeper dive in the United States,” she said.
“For every dollar men make, women make 27 cents less.” Twenty percent of this pay gap has causes — possibly bias and other factors — that are not easily explained. But 80% of the pay gap can be explained, she said, and two-thirds of that is because of career choices women themselves make. These include trade-offs such as opting for jobs with flexible schedules to take care of children or aging parents, or accepting jobs that may align with their values but pay less than others. While these trade-offs are often made for good reasons, women often underestimate their long-term effects.
“We should all be making the right decisions and trade-offs, but they’re not always knowing trade-offs,” Ellingrud said. “So, let’s educate ourselves so we can make the best choices for ourselves.”
The other one-third of the explainable pay gap is due to women holding the majority of part-time jobs. This results in less time in the workplace. For every 10 years men work, women work 8.6 years, according to McKinsey research.
Delayed promotions and less total time in the workplace mean that women amass less experience capital, which Ellingrud defines as “the knowledge, wisdom, and experiences you get on the job.” These include not only skills and subject-matter expertise but also understanding how to collaborate and get things done in a given professional environment.
Good questions
At the Women and Politics Institute session, audience members asked questions about how the data applied to their own careers. Ellingrud’s answers can be useful to almost any woman’s career ambitions:
- How do I build a strong network?
“Anything I care about, I operationalize,” Ellingrud said. “If I wanted to build my network, I would decide on an appropriate amount of time to spend, say, two hours a week. I’d put that on my calendar and decide right away how to use that time. I might read, do coffee chats, or attend an industry conference. I would never leave a conversation without asking who else I should meet.” The key to this process, Ellingrud said, is holding yourself accountable and pursuing your goal systematically. - How do I handle requests for unpaid labor on the job, such as organizing food and social events?
“I would try to do as little of that as possible,” Ellingrud said. “It’s a bit of a double-edged sword. If you are expected to do it and you don’t, you’re criticized or seen as not collaborative. But this is exactly the work that does not get appreciated, does not get you promoted, and does not get you recognized.” She added that unpaid labor at work has an opportunity cost. While you are arranging a retirement party, you can’t be in the room where decisions are made. “Let’s not do that to ourselves,” she said. “Grab a seat at the table and don’t spend time on unpaid office work.” - How do I relate to my former colleagues after I’ve been promoted? How do I avoid alienating them?
Authenticity and genuine intent go a long way, Ellingrud said. “If you’re spending time trying to help others, trying to be that woman who leaves the ladder down and helps other women advance instead of pulling the ladder up behind you, people sense it and will be open to what you have to tell them.”
“We did research across four countries — the United States, U.K., Germany, and India — and it turns out that on average, half of a person’s lifetime income comes from that experience capital,” Ellingrud said. “The other half is driven by education. In that regard, women are hitting it out of the park, but they’re building less experience capital because they’re working 8.6 years per decade.”
The Broken Rung acknowledges that, because of bias and structural barriers, steps individual women take to improve their situation will not result in systemic change. Companies must shoulder some responsibility for fixing the broken rung. Methods they can use include:
- setting goals for the promotion of entry-level employees,
- ensuring diversity in the candidate pool,
- providing bias training for all employees and developing clear, objective criteria for performance and promotion reviews, and
- supporting women early in their careers with training and development, sponsorship programs, and child care benefits.
Choose carefully
Ellingrud said that for all working women, joining the right company is crucial.
“It is the number one thing that women and men do to maximize their salaries and is correlated with 50% higher lifetime earnings.” The right company, she said, invests in employees’ learning and development, supports cross-functional development, cycles workers through various departments to offer a full understanding of the business, and captures and maximizes market share. Women should ask about these things in job interviews, Ellingrud advised.
The second most important thing women can do early in their careers is to make what the researchers call “a big, bold move.” This is an employee-initiated career leap that requires using more than 25% new skills. “Bold moves are stressful. You’re really stretching yourself, and every day is something you’ve never done before,” Ellingrud acknowledged. “But in a couple of years, you build and cement skills, and you’re ready to make another big, bold move. Eighty percent of those who made a bold move increased their income quintile [bracket] over time.”
Power to the network
It is also important for women to acquire the skills Ellingrud and her co-authors say are the most valuable to future-proof their careers. Networking is the most important. Ellingrud said, “We know that women and people of color tend to be over-mentored and under-sponsored. That is, they get lots of advice, lots of coffee chats … but when it comes to really creating an opportunity that didn’t exist before, that happens less frequently for women and even less frequently for people of color.”
A sponsor, unlike a mentor, makes a personal commitment to help boost another’s career. “It’s a very different level of action and opportunity creation than mentorship,” Ellingrud said. Someone can mentor dozens of people and be effective, but sponsorship works well only for a few people at a time.
Seventy percent of job openings are never posted, she said; they are filled by people who are networking successfully. “Women have more narrow and more junior networks than men do. In addition, women are five times more likely to have only women in their network.” And because fewer women are higher up on the corporate ladder, networking with only women may limit a woman’s opportunities.
Ellingrud advised women to analyze the strength of their networks to determine how many relationships they have, how strong those relationships are, and how many are within their company.
So-called soft skills, such as negotiation, empathy, and listening, are also essential. “They are increasingly what we will need in the future,” she said. “When you think about the difference between a good leader and an amazing leader, that’s all soft skills.”
Like networking, soft skills can be learned systematically. And they are inherently human and can’t be replaced by artificial intelligence, she said.
