Podcast Summary: "What will it take for working women to rise?"

The McKinsey Podcast — November 21, 2024
Host: Lucia Rahilly & Roberta Fassaro (McKinsey & Company)
Guests: Alexis Krivkovich and Lorena Yee, McKinsey Senior Partners

Overview

This episode marks the 10th anniversary of McKinsey’s landmark "Women in the Workplace" research, conducted with Lean In, and explores the progress, setbacks, and future pathways for women’s advancement in corporate environments. Lucia Rahilly and Roberta Fassaro host a lively discussion with senior partners Alexis Krivkovich and Lorena Yee. The episode critically examines persistent barriers to women’s progression—including structural biases, leadership commitment, and caretaking expectations—while highlighting practical steps for leaders and allies to effect meaningful change.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origins of "Women in the Workplace" Research

• Personal Motivations
  • Alexis Krivkovich recounts her own "wake-up call" upon entering McKinsey’s global partner meeting and finding less than one-in-six women present, despite it being 2015.
    • Quote (Alexis):

      “I was stunned ... I expected to see so many women ... what I saw was a room that looked a lot like what we saw in most C-suites across corporate America 10 years ago.” (02:00)

  • Lorena Yee describes realizing that her presence would "double" the number of women in client meetings and wanting to use McKinsey analytics to tackle the lack of women at the top.
    • Quote (Lorena):

      “I would double the population of women every time I walked into a client meeting.” (02:44)

2. Barriers to Change: Commitment & "Will"

• A powerful clip from a Black woman manager states the biggest barrier is simply the "will to make overarching changes.”

  • Quote (Black woman manager):

    “I don’t know that we have the will to make overarching changes ... because the status quo is working for a bunch of people.” (04:00)

• Receding Commitment

  • Alexis warns that fewer companies are making diversity a top priority, signaling dangerous backsliding:
    • Quote (Alexis):

      "For the first time... the number of companies that put diversity as a top priority has fallen down for the first time." (04:24)

• Fatigue & Zero Sum Framing

  • The discussion highlights emerging "fatigue” on diversity and worries about the issue being reframed as a "zero sum game," when, in fact, diversity benefits everyone through better access to coaching, support, and opportunity.

3. The Ambition Myth

• Lorena debunks the myth that women are less ambitious than men:
  • Quote (Lorena):

    “I don’t think we should confuse being polite with being ambitious ... Women ... are incredibly, positively ambitious to be leaders ... That is not the issue. The issue is the system and all the hurdles.” (06:45)

4. Progress Achieved (and Its Fragility)

• C-suite Representation
  • Women's representation in the C-suite grew from 17% to 29% in a decade—a major gain but one with limited sustainability.
  • Most of these gains were through added staff roles (e.g., HR, Finance), not through core business roles or internal promotions.
    • Quote (Alexis):

      “The way companies got there is not a playbook they can apply looking forward... And so when you look back down the pipeline ... you see this flattening out and a much slower progress curve, which suggests that something’s broken inside a lot of companies.” (07:46 / 08:54)

5. Key Practices Advancing Women

• Benefits & Flexibility
  • Substantial progress: widespread parental leave, bereavement, eldercare, and flexibility (though gaps remain at the day-to-day experience level).
    • Quote (Lorena):

      “When we think about our benefits ... it is not an exception, it is more the norm ... When we think about recruiting, we’ve seen so much progress ... these are real gains.” (09:53)

6. Motherhood, Caretaking, and the Return to Office

• Workplace Flexibility

  • The importance of clear maternity benefits and flexible career architecture, especially as women continue to bear a disproportionate share of caregiving.
    • Quote (Southeast Asian woman manager):

      “It’s just not fair for women to feel like they need to make a trade-off between taking care of their kids and going to work.” (12:02)

• Unchanged Burden

  • Alexis:

    “Women are far more likely, irrespective of earning power, to disproportionately hold the household, childcare, eldercare responsibilities at home ... That has not changed generationally. It has not changed over time.” (13:51)

7. The Broken Pipeline: Entry-Level & Middle Management

• Statistical Drop-offs

  • Despite women earning the majority of degrees for decades, they’re underrepresented from entry-level positions onward—especially women of color.
  • Latina women, in particular, face the most pronounced "broken rung": for every 100 men, only 65 Latina women get their first promotion to manager, and they are severely underrepresented at the C-suite level.
    • Quote (Alexis):

      "...for Latinas ... for every 100 men, 65 Latina women get that first step up to manager ... Latinas make up 9.6% of the population, 1.4% of the C-suite." (15:17 / 16:33)

• Bias in Evaluation

  • Alexis cites biased promotion criteria and a daily lack of support, sponsorship, and stretch opportunities for women of color as key drivers of these disparities.
    • Quote (Alexis):

      "If you are an excellent leader, but you don’t look like the prototype ... you often get overlooked or undercounted...” (16:52)

    • Lorena adds:

      “It’s death by a thousand cuts.” (17:51)

8. Paths Forward: What Can Help Women Advance?

• Debiasing Hiring and Advancement

  • Technology and more formalized processes can help disrupt bias, identify new pathways, and accelerate capability-building.

    • Alexis:

      “Technology could identify talent where ... we’re using stale human bias-based pattern recognition ... Technology can even the playing field...” (18:24)

  • Lorena:

    “Women can use technology as a tool to advance their own expertise ... a source of optimism is also access to capital and entrepreneurship ... Imagine if we actually changed that.” (19:25)

9. Everyday Allyship & Leadership

• Ready-Made Actions
  • True allyship requires action, not just intention. Allies should regularly ask themselves what tangible support they’ve provided to others; leaders should audit whom they sponsor and mentor to ensure diversity.
    • Alexis:

      “It’s great to say I want to be an ally ... What have I done lately? ... One way everyone can be an ally is to actually do that on the behalf of someone else.” (21:02)

    • Lorena:

      “If questioned, defend the work of a woman colleague ... ask, what are your ambitions? How can I help you? ... You don’t need to wait for some big policy ... this is something everyone ... can do tomorrow." (22:19)

    • Alexis:

      “Write down the list of the people you think you’re sponsoring and mentoring, and then grade yourself on how diverse that list is.” (23:03)

10. What Needs to Change—And Final Thoughts

• Radical Rethinking Required

  • At the current pace, gender parity in leadership won’t occur for another 50 years; incremental steps are not sufficient—discontinuous, creative approaches are needed (e.g., entrepreneurial access, skills-based advancement, public-private partnership on childcare).
    • Lorena:

      "...to get to parity, we won’t see it in 2035 ... it’s 50 years. We will not get there with incremental steps forward. We need discontinuous thinking.” (24:02)

• Rigor and Persistence

  • The necessary playbook combines rigor (consistently rooting out bias in every process) and persistence (not giving up when fatigued).
    • Alexis:

      “You don’t walk off the baseball field halfway through ... It will take rigor and persistence.” (25:32)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Women’s Leadership Pipeline:

  “Women, consistently over the 10 years we’ve been doing this research, are incredibly, positively ambitious ... That is not the issue. The issue is the system and all the hurdles they face to try and fulfill that potential and talent.”
  Lorena Yee (06:45)

• On C-Suite Progress:

  “That’s a huge gain ... But there’s a lot of fragility in that progress. First, the way companies got there is not a playbook they can apply looking forward.”
  Alexis Krivkovich (07:46)

• On the Stakes:

  “It’s death by a thousand cuts. And that is the felt experience...”
  Lorena Yee (17:51)

• On Radical Change Needed:

  “These are numbers that are not good ... We will not get there with incremental steps forward. We need discontinuous thinking.”
  Lorena Yee (24:02)

Timestamps for Major Segments

• [02:00] – Research origins and partners’ personal stories
• [04:00] – Will and commitment to change in companies
• [06:45] – Addressing the “ambition” narrative about women
• [07:46] – C-suite representation gains and their limits
• [09:53] – Benefits, flexibility, and other corporate advances
• [12:02] – Motherhood, care, and flexibility; return-to-office
• [15:17] – Barriers at entry & manager levels, broken rung for Latinas
• [16:52] – Structural bias in hiring and advancement
• [18:24] – Technology’s role in debiasing and accelerating progress
• [21:02] – Allyship: action vs. intention
• [24:02] – Radical thinking and vision for future parity
• [25:32] – Rigor and persistence needed for real change

Conclusion

This episode provides an incisive overview of both the progress and persistent barriers facing women in the workplace. It emphasizes that while significant strides have been made—especially in C-suite representation—these gains are fragile and not yet systemically embedded. To accelerate progress, leaders must recommit with rigor and persistence, leverage technology for bias disruption, embrace radical new approaches, and practice daily, intentional allyship.

Women’s advancement will not happen through incremental gains alone; only by fundamentally reimagining how talent is developed, recognized, and sponsored can we achieve real parity—ideally long before another fifty years pass.