Women in the U.S. are being held back in the workplace, thanks to “less sponsorship and manager advocacy,” according to a new annual report.
The 2025 Women in the Workplace Report, published by the advocacy group Lean In and the management consulting group McKinsey & Company, details how a number of companies are “deprioritizing” women’s careers. Some of these companies have even scaled back workplace programs that are beneficial to women, including remote work and targeted career development, according to the report.
The report also found that “for the first time, there is a notable ambition gap: women are less interested in being promoted than men.”
Jennifer McCollum, president and CEO of the nonprofit Catalyst, which advocates for women’s advancement and equity in the workplace, said in a statement that this report should be a “wake-up call” for leaders.
“Lean In’s new report on women in the workplace should be a wake-up call for every corporate leader: progress for women is fragile,” McCollum told The Independent. “The report highlights familiar pressure points for women at work that Catalyst has been highlighting for decades: limited flexibility, uneven sponsorship, and unequal access to opportunity.”
Here’s what this year’s report revealed about women in the workplace, and how companies can ensure women have equitable access to career advancement opportunities:
The ‘ambition gap’
The report found there’s an “ambition gap” between men and women in the workplace. About 80 percent of women wanted a promotion, compared to 86 percent of men, the report found. The gap is also the widest at the entry and senior levels.
“Career support is strongly linked to desire to advance,” the report reads. “When women and men have sponsors and receive similar levels of support from managers and more senior colleagues, they are equally enthusiastic about getting promoted to the next level. The gap in desire to advance falls away.”
Lean In CEO Rachel Thomas told The Independent that women are “feeling that lower commitment highlighted in the report, and they’re feeling the pullback on programs that are especially beneficial to women.”
“Understandably, that leaves them feeling more left out and less optimistic,” Thomas said.
Women are less likely to be promoted than men
Women are still underrepresented at every level in the workplace, the report found. “For every 100 men, only 93 women were promoted to manager—and even fewer women of color,” the report reads.
This trend particularly hurts young women who are early in their careers.
“We know entry-level women in particular are up against a lot early in their careers, as evidenced by the 11th year of that concerning broken rung, where they’re less likely to get promoted to manager, which then makes it so there are fewer women to get promoted to senior manager, and director, and on and on,” Thomas said.
Even when women secure high-level roles in the workplace, they still face barriers to advancement and wellness, the report found.
“Senior-level women who are reluctant to advance are more likely to think top roles are unattainable and that employees in the top jobs are burned out and unhappy. Compared to other employees, senior-level women also stand out for high levels of burnout and concerns their gender will impede their advancement,” the report reads.
Workplaces can work to improve outcomes for women
This year’s report emphasizes that workplace leaders can take tangible steps in the next year to improve outcomes for women.
“When employees see their workplace as fair and inclusive, they are at least twice as likely to feel motivated to do their best work, comfortable taking risks, and able to speak up in dissent,” the report reads.
Sponsorship is one key way workplaces can support women who want to advance in their careers, McCollum said.
“This network of senior leaders who use their influence and status to advance women and help them secure high-visibility projects or roles is key to opening the boardroom door and strengthening pathways to senior leadership and the C-suite,” she said.
Thomas is encouraging workplaces to “track outcomes” for their employees so they can better understand what resources they need.
According to Thomas, workplace leaders should ask: “Who gets sponsored and does it lead to promotion? Who gets leadership training and does it lead to stretch assignments or other opportunities to advance? Who is getting encouraged to use AI and trained to use AI?”
“This year, we see entry-level women are not getting the same level of encouragement from their managers, and obviously that could have huge implications over the next couple years and beyond,” Thomas added.
She’s also encouraging women early in their careers to seek out peer mentorship opportunities.
“It’s hard for me to think back early in my career, but I remember not thinking I could be that helpful to other women — I was so early in my career myself, what help could I offer? And indeed, I think nothing is further from the truth,” Thomas said.
“There’s a lot of research on the power of peer mentorship, offering advice to peers, sharing ideas with peers, commiserating with peers, and the validation that comes with that.”