June 10, 2025 • 38 mins
From academic achievement to workplace roadblocks—why do women lose ground after graduation? McKinsey’s Kweilin Ellingrud joins Alita Guillen to break down the data and offer actionable strategies for women navigating their careers. From the broken rung to experience capital, bold moves to bias, this episode tackles the real challenges—and the opportunities—that define a woman’s path at work.
Kweilin shares:
📘 The Broken Rung is available now.
📊 Learn more at McKinsey.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG1_DIh33LfXaiEiOscEyGQ
Kweilin shares:
- Why women fall behind early in their careers
- How motherhood penalizes women—and rewards men
- The difference between a mentor and a sponsor
- What the “power alley” is and why it matters
- How to build experience capital and boost your lifetime income
- Why AI and job disruption affect women more
- What women can do today to future-proof their careers
📘 The Broken Rung is available now.
📊 Learn more at McKinsey.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG1_DIh33LfXaiEiOscEyGQ
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It may or may not surprise you that as women
rise in their career, they tend to have a tougher
time leveling up than their male counterparts. Women do great
in school, graduate at higher rates than men, and have
high GPAs, but when we enter the workforce, we lose
our edge. My guest today is here to explain why
that continues to happen and what we can do about it.
(00:22):
Boylan Ellenrude is McKenzie and Company's Chief Diversity Officer and
director of the McKinsey Global Institute. She is the co
author of the book The Broken Rung, When the Career
Ladder Breaks for Women and how they can succeed in
spite of it. She joins me now with some actionable
tips for women in the workplace by Law Home Boiling.
(01:04):
How are you? Thank you for joining me today, pleasure.
So this is a conversation I feel like we've been having.
So I'm really curious about your data points and what
you say we can do about it. I'm also very
interested to know when you go in to work with
some of these companies and some of the clients, individual
women men, how you mentally prepare, what your mindset is
(01:28):
and what goes through your mind before you meet with
these people.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
What goes through my mind is this is such a
hard challenge to solve, right, It's been decades in the making,
centuries in the making, if you will, And so to
solve this issue will take a really concerted effort over
a very long period of time. And so is this
client ready, Is this leadership team ready to kind of
(01:53):
stay focused, execute honestly like they would any other business initiative.
Right when you tackle diversity and inclusion, and you don't
do it with the right resources, with the right accountability,
with the right success metrics, with the right course correction,
if you're not having the impact that you want, then
it's kind of silly to expect, you know, incredible results
(02:15):
because we wouldn't do that if it were a business problem.
And this is fundamentally a business problem.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And what kind of response do you get.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
A bit of We have focused on this over time,
but we haven't always kept the plot in good times
and bad and so it's really hard to kind of
keep focused on this over ten twenty thirty years, which
is the concerted effort that we need to see to
make really steady progress in the right direction, and let's just.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Start with defining broken wrung. We're not talking about glass ceiling,
you're saying broken wrong. So define that, and then what's
the difference.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Absolutely broken wrong? Is that first promotion to manager. So
you're at the entry level and frankly, at the talent pyramid.
Seventy percent of employees are at the bottom of that
talent pyramid, at the entry level, and everybody needs to
make it through that first broken rung. The broken rung is,
in quantitative terms, for every hundred men who are promoted
(03:15):
to that first manager role, eighty one women are so
there's nineteen missing women managers. And it's even more stark
for women of color. So for every one hundred men,
sixty four Latina women and fifty four Black women get promoted,
so almost half the promotion rate for black women.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Has that changed over years? Has that improved gotten worse?
Where are we?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
It has ebbed and flowed. Some years, it's gone a
little bit up, others it's been a little bit down.
But for ten years straight, where we've been doing women
in the workplace benchmarking, it's been pretty steady.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Wow wow, And what do you attribute that to?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I attribute that to a lot of different things. It's
interesting because actually women excel academically. Right in the United States,
we get fifty nine percent of college degrees, we're seventy
percent of valedictorians, have higher average GPAs are the majorities
of masters and PhDs as well. So academically we're excelling.
It's just once we enter the workplace we kind of
(04:21):
lose ground. And frankly we lose ground at this first
promotion to manager. But even before we are having kids
or you know, some of these other challenges are coming
into play. And so what do I attribute that to.
I attribute that to a challenging kind of system and
ecosystem that doesn't recognize talent equally. I attribute that to
(04:43):
the motherhood bias, which we'll get into in a little bit,
versus the fatherhood bonus. And I also attribute that to
different rates of building what we call experience capital and
experience capital is that knowledge, wisdom, experience that you learn
on the job. And women build experience capital at lower
rates than men because for every ten years that men
(05:06):
are in the workplace, women are in the workplace around
eight point six years. Because we take more breaks and
longer breaks typically around child we're in years, and so
we're actually working less and getting less experience and also
getting paid less for that explent.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Okay, so that's a challenge right there, and that happen
a huge challenge is that happening in that lower rung Already.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
It's happening across the board. And you know, we see
in the US data there is a twenty seven cent
pay gap. About eighty percent of that pay gap is explainable.
We know why it's happening, which means twenty percent is
not explainable. Right we don't have the variables or the
data to measure it, or perhaps it's bias. But the
eighty percent we can explain comes from two sources. Two
(05:50):
thirds of it is the occupational choices that women make.
So we might choose a job for more flexibility, we
might choose a job that's less overtly competitive, like we
get out of sales, for example, or out of the
power alley is one of the terms we talk about.
But we make just different kind of occupational choices. So
when women jump jobs, they are more likely to either
(06:12):
stay at the same pay or decrease their income quintile.
When men jump jobs, they're much more likely to increase
their income quintile. So that's two thirds of the explainable gap.
The other two thirds of the explainable gap is that
experience capital. We're not working for as much time we have,
the more breaks and the longer breaks around those child
wearing years, but also later to take care of parents,
(06:34):
take care of in laws. Right, women in the United
States do about twice as much unpaid care work as men.
Around the world, we do three times as much unpaid
care work as men. In India we do about ten
times as much unpaid care work as men. And so
we're doing more work outside of our kind of professional capacity,
which makes it harder also to balance work and responsibilities
(06:55):
within our professional capacity.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
So when you're meeting with the companies that want to
make a change, are they valuing that, How do they
handle that unpaid stuff? And do they value it? Do
they want to compensate women for it? Is there a
change in attitude.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I think it's more of a recognition that it does happen.
I don't think they certainly want to compensate women for it.
Sometimes it is a barrier where they need to understand
what is happening, for example, providing childcare or childcare, flexibility
and options so that more women can enter the workplace,
or maybe they're in the workplace but they're part time
(07:38):
and they want to shift to full time. So those
are challenges, particularly during COVID and post COVID, that I
think more employers have started to explore. But it's more
of a recognition and what we see in the data
is that there's actually quite a bit of bias against mothers.
So when you compare a woman with children to a
woman without children, a woman with children is monemuch less
(08:00):
likely to get the job, much less likely to get promoted.
Now the reverse is true for men. There's a fatherhood bonus.
When you compare men with children to men without children,
men with children are more likely to get the job,
more likely to get promoted, more likely to get paid highly,
and the impact goes up the more children the man has.
So we're penalizing mothers for having children and being perhaps
(08:21):
two active parents, and we are giving benefits or kind
of when you dig underneath and kind of ask why
kind of these fathers are getting higher pay it's they're
viewed as more stable, more trustworthy, more likely to stay
with the company. Perhaps they need more income to kind
of provide for their children. But the same is not
you know, true or viewed in the same way for women.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
So are you seeing maybe you don't have this information,
but then are you are women aware of it? And
are you seeing more women say Okay, either I'm not
going to tell you about my family, or I'm simply
not going to have a family, or I'm going to
wait to have a family. Are you seeing any of
those things?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I think women are increasingly aware of it. I do
know a number of women in competitive jobs, even in
kind of raising funds for their entrepreneurial invavors, who will
hide their pregnancy until the very last moment or you know,
completely if they can. And other women kind of making
different choices of you know, maybe I will delay having
(09:23):
kids until I'm in a more flexible place or have
more options, or perhaps as you describe, not have children
at all. So we have seen the birth rate or
the fatality rate for women around the world in developed
countries dropped dramatically. Right first it was in Asia, South Korea, Japan,
and China. Now we're actually seeing that across the US
(09:45):
and Europe for a while now as well as other countries.
Even India, the birth rate has dropped pretty dramatically.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Can you go back for a second to the experience
capital and if there is a delay or a differentiation,
how do women catch up to that? What kinds of
things can they do?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Absolutely so experience capital and those gaps. In fact, how
individuals can build experience capital faster is the whole focus
of the book. Right, how do we as individuals take action,
make different decisions so that we are keeping our experience
capital learning curves deep and keeping it you know, see
that each pivot point across a career. And so what
(10:26):
can women do? The number one thing women and men
can do is actually pick the right company. When you
pick the right company, that's correlated with fifty percent higher
lifetime income. And the right company does three things. Number One,
it invests in your learning and development, and that could
be a percentage of time, you know, twenty percent of
(10:46):
your time, ten percent of your time, or a strong
training culture or training programs. Second, it focuses on cross
functional rotations. So you're not going to start in finance
and end their thirty five years later. You will rote
tat around. Maybe you start in finance, you go into
the business, you come back to HR, but you're learning
the industry from different perspectives, and you're building your skills
(11:09):
in that experience capital and stretching yourself over time. And third,
great companies will also have a clear strategy, and you
can usually tell that even outside in based on how
they're performing relative to their competitors. So those three factors,
if you can look outside but even before you accept
an offer, those are the kinds of companies that build
leaders that are going to stretch your experience capital really well.
(11:33):
And ideally you pick a company like that early on
in your career because then you have your entire career
to benefit from those skills. But that is the number
one thing that you can do. I would say a
second thing would be getting into the power alley and
getting experience there.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Right, what is the power alley?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
So the power alley is what some might call staying
close to the cash register in a company or an industry.
How does your company make money? And if you can
get into the power alley and learn how your company
and how your industry does that, even for two three years,
that will help you across an entire career. So just
(12:13):
over a third of men start in the power alley.
Just under a third of women do, and it's correlated
with twenty percent higher lifetime income. But just getting that
experience is critical to your trajectory.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And can you explain what some of those jobs are
in the power alley? Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, yeah, So a power alley, let's say, in a
tech firm would be in product development, product management. In
a law firm, it would be being a lawyer. In
most companies, it's in sales or distribution. Right, how do
you kind of create revenue? In a consulting firm, it
would be being a consultant. But basically, how do you
sell and make money? And what is this specific function
(12:51):
or group that does that? That is the power alley
of your organization.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
And in those same examples, what are jobs that are
not in the power ally?
Speaker 2 (13:02):
So interestingly, being in tech but in a law firm
is not in the power alley, right, Being in tech
in a tech firm is in the power alley. So
a support function would not be in the power alley
because you're supporting other groups. You're supporting the primary group
that's out there doing sales or you know, customer development
for example.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
So I feel like what I'm hearing you say, is
you almost want to skip the first piece of an
entry level job. So does that mean more education because
you can't go in to a law firms as a
lawyer in that role unless you've gone to law school.
So I feel like we're skipping kind of that entry
(13:43):
level position.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
I mean, everybody has to get that first promotion to manager.
But you bring up a great point. So this experience
capital is actually roughly fifty to fifty. So around the world,
roughly half of your lifetime income is from experience capital,
the wisdom and experience you build on the job. The
other half is from your education and the characteristics you
(14:06):
bring to your first job. So if you think about
that fifty to fifty, it will differ by person, it
will differ by occupation. So your example of a lawyer, doctor, engineer,
right jobs where it requires quite a bit of education
to even get that first job in the occupation. In
those occupations, more of your lifetime income on average will
(14:27):
come from your education, versus if you're a plumber or
a waitress, more of your lifetime income will come from
experience capital. Can I learn how to be a manager
of other plumbers or start my own business in this space?
That will determine more of lifetime income.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
And does that change or let me see if I
can figure out how to phrase this question to capture
what I'm thinking is does.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
That change.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Early in your career later in your career? In other words,
if you're someone who has a lot of education and
you want to make a change later in your career,
does that help more than the experience? Or you used
plumber server? Do you know what I'm asking? I'm asking
sort of like it. Okay, good, thank you.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
I think what you're describing, Alita, is what we call
big bold moves. Okay, when you make a job jump
and you're really stretching yourself to learn new skills. So
I described kind of the average arc right of your
lifetime income. What we see is that women and men
on average make the same number of what we call
big bold moves. And a bold move is something that
(15:40):
really stretches your skills. You are not sure of what
you're doing because you haven't done it before. And we
measured the average what we call skill distance of a
job jump. So at that number is twenty five percent.
When you take on a new role, twenty five percent
of the skills that you use in that new job
are not skills that you used in your old job.
So twenty five percent is the average? Anything higher than
(16:03):
twenty five percent thirty forty fifty percent new skills. That
is a bold move. When you make a bold move,
that is when you are building your experience capital at
the highest rate. And that is a wonderful stretch for
your lifetime income, right, because you're growing in new ways. Yes,
it's uncomfortable, but if you can frame it in a
positive way of I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm stretching myself.
(16:26):
This is really healthy for me. It's probably the best
thing I can do for my experience capital. That's a
great thing. And what we saw in the data, interestingly,
is that women and men do the same number of
bold moves, roughly one point seven per decade, and that
was encouraging. But what is different between women and men
is when women do a bold move, they're more likely
(16:47):
to either stay at the same income or decrease their
income quintile and men are much more likely to make
a bold move and increase their income quintile. And now,
if you do that knowingly, right, let's say you're trading
off salary for more flexibility because you've got more unpaid
care work at home, or if you're trading it off
for a job that's more aligned to your values, wonderful.
(17:08):
But we also see in the data some of the
things that we solve. For example, in nursing, over the
last few decades, nursing used to be male dominated, and
as nursing became more female dominated, average salaries came down.
I think there's other examples with teaching and other occupations
where we haven't seen kind of occupational pay stay the same.
(17:29):
And so making the right trade offs for you is
going to be critical. And when you do make a
bold move, make it count or at least trade off
for things that are important for you.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Right, So the bold move can be something that you're
saying twenty five percent sort of a learning curve that's
considered a bold move, but you could more. But women
are making bold moves that sometimes are lateral or for
other reasons not necessarily increasing their kind of you know,
(18:03):
not necessarily climbing the ladder. Exactly, yeah, exactly, interesting, Wow, Okay,
all right. It also makes me wonder should women just
go and work for themselves, should they become entrepreneurs more
than sticking with the company. Any research on this, I've.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Seen a number of Yeah, women do that right of
I don't want to work in a place where the
rules are set by somebody else because I don't like
the way the rules are said and I don't feel
like it's an equal playing field. So women have been
going out to be their own entrepreneurs. When they do so,
the highest success rates are when they stick close to
(18:44):
something they know well. So maybe they were in media
and advertising and they start a firm in that space. Right,
in that case, bold moves are not recommended to stay
close to kind of what you know from your past
world and start a business in that space. Unfortunately, when
they do, those businesses tend to be under resourced in
terms of bank loans. We know that only two point
(19:06):
three percent of venture capital goes to women led businesses
of just a poultry number, and so we know that
they're underfunded. And women led businesses are much more likely
to employ only one person, the woman herself much less
likes to be kind of high growth unicorns. And so
how do we also kind of equalize the playing field
both on being full time entrepreneurs but also kind of
(19:27):
funding through bank loans through venture capital and higher growth
funding sources as well, so that we're focusing on the
right kind of growth trajectory.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah, how do we do that? How do we do that?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
It's a nhe old problem. Yeah, I think both tackling
the mix of the businesses we start. Right. Women are
more likely to start retail businesses, which have like a
fifty percent failure rate. In fact, many banks don't even
lend to those areas because of such the high failure rate,
both retail strawts, etc. So we could shift the mix
(20:03):
of those as well as shift some of the bias
that we see in terms of kind of lending as
well as venture capital investment.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Is it good to change jobs a lot? Is that helpful?
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Within reason? Right?
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Too much?
Speaker 2 (20:20):
And it's a bit of like, hm, you never stick
anywhere every two three years, you're sort of jumping before
you've actually built the skills stretched yourself.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Sometimes it takes somebody who knows you to make a
bold move, which is where we talk about the multiplier
effector of networking. And so I would say fewer moves.
When you do make them moves, make them count. Right
back to these bold moves and kind of strategically considered
bold moves. So a few moves could be internal if
(20:52):
you're in the right company and they have space and
kind of new roles could be outside your current company.
Either one works, but strategically considered ones that are bold moves,
stretching your skills and ideally at some point in your
first ten years in that power alley right where your
company and industry is making money.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Okay, I have a question for you for male versus
female leaders and if you are a manager or looking
to get promoted be a manager, is there any data
that says you're going to have more success if you
have a male boss versus a female boss or the
other way around, or is it equal.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
I don't know on promotion rates. What we've seen in
some of our women in the workplace data is that
there's a broad distribution of female and male managers. On average,
female managers are more likely between four and eleven percentage
points more likely to support your learning goals, kind of
give you a step up opportunity, help you set boundaries
(21:55):
and balance life and work. Frankly, things that you know,
since COVID, we find are increasingly important. I would say, frankly,
the rate at which both male and female managers do
those things is far too low. I wish you know
both distributions were shifted up dramatically, but women managers on
average do those things a bit more. So that is helpful.
(22:16):
The other piece, though, is we found feedback for women
and people of color is both. It's just less tough
feedback is received, and that is from both male managers
and female managers. And when we ask why, right, like,
you have both men and women on your team, you're
clearly developed. You know you're delivering the tough feedback to
(22:37):
the men, but the women are not getting that same
tough feedback. And when we dig underneath and ask why,
the answer is typically around I don't want to appear mean,
and I'm afraid of an emotional reaction. I'm afraid of tears.
And so if we as women are not getting that
tough feedback of quailan here's what you need to learn
to run the business or to get to the next level,
(22:57):
then it's going to be really challenging to learn and
grow to build experience capital at that same rate.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
I know you talk about AI in the book, and
we have to talk about AI, right, everyone's talking about
it is that helpful to women, not helpful to women,
not helpful.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
On average, it is impacting women's jobs fifty percent more so,
women are fifty percent more likely to have to switch
jobs in the next five to ten years because we
are so concentrated in the shrinking jobs Generative AI. But
we also added demographic trends, which are shifting quickly, as
well as consumption trends. Partially as a result of those
(23:36):
demographic trends. All of those things together are growing jobs
a few jobs pretty dramatically, and they're shrinking other jobs
also pretty dramatically. And so to your question, women are
concentrated in three of the four fastest shrinking occupations, which
is why we're fifty percent more likely to have to
switch occupations. So those four are customer service and sales
(24:00):
contact centers. Right, we hear a lot about digital kind
of self serve, like a lot of things going away
with Generative AI. Second is food service waiters, waitresses, bartenders.
The third is office services, so administrative assistance receptionists. We
need some, but far fewer than before, and women dominate
(24:20):
those three occupational categories. The four shrinking category is production
or manufacturing, which is more male dominated, so lots of
concentration in the shrinking jobs. The growing jobs are healthcare,
STEM and transportation, including last mile delivery, so you're Amazon's
ubers of the world. Women are concentrated in healthcare, not
(24:42):
very much in STEM, and a bit more mixed in transportation.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Is there an equivalent for men to the broken wrong?
Speaker 2 (24:50):
I think it would be earlier on in education. So
I've got three daughters, twelve, nine, and nine, and I
think in educational contexts higher rates of ADHD, you know,
harder time with grades persisting in college even if they
do get in. I think some of the challenges are
probably earlier on studying attention span, focus, executive function kinds
(25:12):
of things. And then once they get into the workplace,
we don't see the broken wrung for men. We do
see it sometimes for men of color, but for white
male colleagues less so.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
At least on average, what you know, we're talking about
all the challenges that women have and what can they do?
Then what can we tell listeners who now feel like,
oh wow, that's a lot which we knew right where
you're just giving us these the specific data, but we've
(25:44):
known that this has been a challenge for a long time.
It continues to be a challenge, But what can we
do today to help ourselves?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Absolutely, and Alita, you're right, it's easy to get depressed
with the data. I think data and knowledge is power,
so I would feel better knowing the facts around it.
And then to your point, I think there's key points
across a career. Early on in a career, I take
comfort that we actually control a lot of this. You
hope that your organization supports diversity and inclusion, but whether
(26:14):
they do or not, there's so much that you can
do in terms of your own decisions. Early on, I
would pick the right company number one. I would make calculated, strategic,
bold moves and try to move up in income when
I do so, and I would get experience in that
power alley. At the margin. Given our discussion around generative AI,
I might choose those occupations that are growing right, not shrinking.
(26:38):
And then across a career, let's say, across sort of
the middle of my career, I think there's a number
of skills that each of us can build to future
proof our career. Things are changing so quickly with generative
AIS is that we were discussing, I think networking is critical.
Women tend to be over mentored, actually people of color
as well, over mentored, undersponsored. Lots of advice, lots of discussion,
(27:02):
but when it really comes to creating opportunities that didn't
exist before, that happens less frequently for women and people
of color, and we really need to kind of equalize
that through our networks. So women are more likely to
have more narrow and more junior sponsorship networks. And because
seventy percent of jobs are not even posted, if you
don't kind of get to know what opportunities are out
(27:25):
there through your network, you're at a systematic disadvantage. So
how do we build those networks? Activate them? And women
we see in the research are more likely to be
uncomfortable mixing their personal networks and their friendships with their
work relationships. Sometimes we may start to doubt the foundation
of that friendship if we're mixing it too much with work.
Does she really like me for me or is this
(27:47):
just convenient from.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
A career perspective.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Versus, men are much more comfortable mixing the two. Right
they have a beer, they go for we play golf,
and the deal is more likely to work out because
they know each other and oh he's a good guy,
it'll be fine. And so while we're shooting ourselves in
the foot. From a networking perspective, I think men are
really kind of using that synergy there, and so building
networks across a career. Building tech skills not coding, but
(28:14):
can you become a super user and understand the impact
on your group. I think those are important skills. And
social and emotional skills, so empathy, negotiation, leading a team, right,
these are all skills that are really going to differentiate
leaders and managers over the next ten years. Women on
average have higher social and emotional skills, right, But if
(28:35):
we can build those, I think that's a huge advantage
to kind of future proof right career. So lots of
actions I think we can take.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yeah, well, I'm really seeing also something that you said
in there. I mean there's a lot that's really good.
But one real subtlety is a lot of people look
for a mentor, but they don't look for a sponsor.
And there is a difference between a mentor and a sponsor.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
There's a huge difference. And mentors share advice, but they
don't change outcomes. And I'm interested in outcomes. Is there
an opportunity. There is there a new job, a promotion,
a project, a way to kind of shine because if
not like the advice, you can get that from lots
of sources, but it's not that valuable. The sponsors are
(29:21):
worth their weight in gold, and you don't need that
many of them, right, I've had one two at any
given time. If they are doing their job, well that's
all you need. But how do you find them, cultivate them,
kind of keep that relationship strong over time?
Speaker 1 (29:37):
How did you get so interested in this? Had you
had an experience that you thought, hmm, I need to
really dig into this.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
I've been passionate about gender equality for ever as long
as I can remember. I lived in both China and
Japan growing up. I'm half Chinese, and you would think, right,
two countries in Asia graphically pretty close, but really on
different ends of the spectrum in terms of women's role
in society. So in China, you know, Mao is famous
(30:08):
for saying women hold up half the sky. There's very
little gender, you know, kind of concentration in different occupations.
And actually they have the highest rate of female self
made billionaires in the world. And then meanwhile, I was
a senior in high school in Japan, and I knew
very few women working outside of the home, and so
(30:29):
I thought, how can this be and what affects women's
different trajectories in the workplace in society? What are the
societal things that hold women back from participating more fully
in the workplace. So about eleven twelve years ago started
to do some of that research in Power of Parity
and have been involved ever since from just kind of
(30:49):
looking at the data around the world and both what
is the GDP impact, but what is the kind of
individual lives impacted? Women impacted? About both of those things
in tandem.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Did you say you had three daughters and I do
three daughters? Three daughters nine and nine. Okay, so how
are you approaching this knowing that this is what exists?
And obviously you're doing good because you're speaking out on it,
you're trying to make change, But how are you parenting
three daughters knowing that this is the world.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
I think the biggest thing is teaching them both self
confidenced earned self confidence, so giving them opportunities to earn
that for themselves, but teaching them to advocate for themselves.
I think all of the chapters talk about how you
build experience capital is by advocating for yourself right driving
your career, because nobody else can drive your career the
(31:42):
way you can for yourself, given your values and your
trade offs. And so if they can learn to advocate
for themselves, whether that's an elementary school as it is
right now or high school college, and then as they
enter the workforce, I think that will be key. And
then they are learning skills, right, the tech skills, the
social and emotional skills. I truly believe that will help
(32:03):
future proof you know, their education, but also their career
because those are things that in twenty thirty forty years
will still need, you know, quite a bit.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Yeah, yeah, wow, anything I didn't ask you that you
want to mention.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
You know, Alida, the biggest thing that surprised me in
our research was around women's health. And we were involved
in some research around women's health because we all know
women live longer than men, which is wonderful news, but
we also lived twenty five percent more years in poor
health and this was really surprising to me. So because
we're living longer and in poorer health for a longer period,
(32:41):
we spend more money on healthcare not a huge surprise.
But you combine that in terms of retirement with lower
average retirement savings. Right, we've got the majority of part
time jobs, minority of full time jobs, we have lower
average retirement savings, and we need to make that money
stretch for longer. That is just a really challenging equation
that doesn't work and results in older women in poverty,
(33:04):
but also not taking care of their health and so
on both ends of that. I'd love to inspire people
to kind of take different actions. On the retirement side,
how do we make our money work for us? It's
not just about building experience capital across the career and
maximizing your income. How do you make that money work
for you? And women are much more likely to say
(33:26):
I don't know to financial questions or not make a decision.
And when it comes to your retirement savings and financial decisions,
not making a decision is making a decision. So how
do we get more educated, more involved in our retirement
and save more frankly, so there's higher readiness. And then
on the other side, in terms of health, how do
we take our symptoms seriously, advocate for ourselves when it
(33:49):
comes to the health system and doctors, doctors who are
well intentioned but often trained on male symptoms. For example,
a heart attack when we see it in the movie
or when dot com are trained on it is like
tightness of chest. When it manifests in women, it's actually
typically feels a little bit like indigestion. So we tend
to get misdiagnosed, completely undiagnosed, and so it results in
(34:12):
higher death rates for women. So how do we advocate
for ourselves when we are feeling something and then also
save for that you know, longer years in poorer health.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
So what do you recommend? What do you recommend of
how we advocate for ourselves and then how we save
so that we're ready when we're older.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
I think it starts early, right, maximizing your IRA savings,
getting more educated, even if it's like one category every
six months or a year. How do you get involved
in your equity investments, how do you understand your retirement
and tax advantage savings, just little by little getting more involved.
And then on the health side, I think it really
(34:52):
is take your symptoms seriously. If you're not feeling like
you're getting heard by your doctor, go seek another opinion.
But you know you are the only one that can
advocate the best for your own symptoms and your own health.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Right. What I'm hearing you say across the board here
is that advocate for yourself, whether it's in the workplace,
it's your health, it's your finances, it's your education. Women
really have to step up and advocate for themselves. It
doesn't happen enough. And my question to you would be
when they do advocate for themselves, are you seeing results?
Speaker 2 (35:26):
We see results.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
It is a bit mixed.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
For example, a few years ago in the data, we
saw women start to negotiate more for themselves in terms
of title, pay right kind of benefits, and all of
a sudden, when women started to do this, they were
three times more likely to get feedback that they were selfish,
much more likely than men. And this is both from
(35:50):
you know, when they're negotiating with men and women. So
it's not just men react poorly. Women react often in
very much the same ways. So advocating for ourselves is
half the battle. Yeah, and then we need to educate
allies and others so that we're all more aware when
we're interacting with each other of you know, gender differences,
gaps and how people are perceived.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Yeah, wow, okay, so much, so much good stuff. And
like you said, it is good to know so that
you also know how to advocate or how to respond
to what's going on or make change kind of a
I don't know if this is out there for you
or if you have it in the book. I didn't.
(36:33):
I didn't get to that. But what's the responsibility of
men in this?
Speaker 2 (36:41):
I think men can be incredible allies. We cannot change
the system reactions on our own. Right when you look
at the talent pipeline, especially at senior levels, less than
one in three people reporting to a CEO in the
US is a woman, and about one out of fourteen
is a woman of color. And so if we don't
(37:02):
have male allies and other allies helping to equalize the
playing field, recognize when bias is happening, you know, help
all of these more system level changes, it's going to
take even longer to get there. And already it's it's
you know, decades in the making.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Yeah, what's next for you? Is there another book? Do
you feel now that you were this one? You've got?
Speaker 2 (37:26):
You know, what's the one and only? This was certainly
a kind of a focus of passion and kind of
a lifelong interest area. I think what's next is just
sharing the insights from the book and hoping that this
can help people across their career make better decisions for themselves.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your time, thank
you for the research, thank you for sharing you it's wonderful,
it's it's given us a lot to think about, for sure.
My pleasure
It may or may not surprise you that as women
rise in their career, they tend to have a tougher
time leveling up than their male counterparts. Women do great
in school, graduate at higher rates than men, and have
high GPAs, but when we enter the workforce, we lose
our edge. My guest today is here to explain why
that continues to happen and what we can do about it.
(00:22):
Boylan Ellenrude is McKenzie and Company's Chief Diversity Officer and
director of the McKinsey Global Institute. She is the co
author of the book The Broken Rung, When the Career
Ladder Breaks for Women and how they can succeed in
spite of it. She joins me now with some actionable
tips for women in the workplace by Law Home Boiling.
(01:04):
How are you? Thank you for joining me today, pleasure.
So this is a conversation I feel like we've been having.
So I'm really curious about your data points and what
you say we can do about it. I'm also very
interested to know when you go in to work with
some of these companies and some of the clients, individual
women men, how you mentally prepare, what your mindset is
(01:28):
and what goes through your mind before you meet with
these people.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
What goes through my mind is this is such a
hard challenge to solve, right, It's been decades in the making,
centuries in the making, if you will, And so to
solve this issue will take a really concerted effort over
a very long period of time. And so is this
client ready, Is this leadership team ready to kind of
(01:53):
stay focused, execute honestly like they would any other business initiative.
Right when you tackle diversity and inclusion, and you don't
do it with the right resources, with the right accountability,
with the right success metrics, with the right course correction,
if you're not having the impact that you want, then
it's kind of silly to expect, you know, incredible results
(02:15):
because we wouldn't do that if it were a business problem.
And this is fundamentally a business problem.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And what kind of response do you get.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
A bit of We have focused on this over time,
but we haven't always kept the plot in good times
and bad and so it's really hard to kind of
keep focused on this over ten twenty thirty years, which
is the concerted effort that we need to see to
make really steady progress in the right direction, and let's just.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Start with defining broken wrung. We're not talking about glass ceiling,
you're saying broken wrong. So define that, and then what's
the difference.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Absolutely broken wrong? Is that first promotion to manager. So
you're at the entry level and frankly, at the talent pyramid.
Seventy percent of employees are at the bottom of that
talent pyramid, at the entry level, and everybody needs to
make it through that first broken rung. The broken rung is,
in quantitative terms, for every hundred men who are promoted
(03:15):
to that first manager role, eighty one women are so
there's nineteen missing women managers. And it's even more stark
for women of color. So for every one hundred men,
sixty four Latina women and fifty four Black women get promoted,
so almost half the promotion rate for black women.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Has that changed over years? Has that improved gotten worse?
Where are we?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
It has ebbed and flowed. Some years, it's gone a
little bit up, others it's been a little bit down.
But for ten years straight, where we've been doing women
in the workplace benchmarking, it's been pretty steady.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Wow wow, And what do you attribute that to?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I attribute that to a lot of different things. It's
interesting because actually women excel academically. Right in the United States,
we get fifty nine percent of college degrees, we're seventy
percent of valedictorians, have higher average GPAs are the majorities
of masters and PhDs as well. So academically we're excelling.
It's just once we enter the workplace we kind of
(04:21):
lose ground. And frankly we lose ground at this first
promotion to manager. But even before we are having kids
or you know, some of these other challenges are coming
into play. And so what do I attribute that to.
I attribute that to a challenging kind of system and
ecosystem that doesn't recognize talent equally. I attribute that to
(04:43):
the motherhood bias, which we'll get into in a little bit,
versus the fatherhood bonus. And I also attribute that to
different rates of building what we call experience capital and
experience capital is that knowledge, wisdom, experience that you learn
on the job. And women build experience capital at lower
rates than men because for every ten years that men
(05:06):
are in the workplace, women are in the workplace around
eight point six years. Because we take more breaks and
longer breaks typically around child we're in years, and so
we're actually working less and getting less experience and also
getting paid less for that explent.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Okay, so that's a challenge right there, and that happen
a huge challenge is that happening in that lower rung Already.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
It's happening across the board. And you know, we see
in the US data there is a twenty seven cent
pay gap. About eighty percent of that pay gap is explainable.
We know why it's happening, which means twenty percent is
not explainable. Right we don't have the variables or the
data to measure it, or perhaps it's bias. But the
eighty percent we can explain comes from two sources. Two
(05:50):
thirds of it is the occupational choices that women make.
So we might choose a job for more flexibility, we
might choose a job that's less overtly competitive, like we
get out of sales, for example, or out of the
power alley is one of the terms we talk about.
But we make just different kind of occupational choices. So
when women jump jobs, they are more likely to either
(06:12):
stay at the same pay or decrease their income quintile.
When men jump jobs, they're much more likely to increase
their income quintile. So that's two thirds of the explainable gap.
The other two thirds of the explainable gap is that
experience capital. We're not working for as much time we have,
the more breaks and the longer breaks around those child
wearing years, but also later to take care of parents,
(06:34):
take care of in laws. Right, women in the United
States do about twice as much unpaid care work as men.
Around the world, we do three times as much unpaid
care work as men. In India we do about ten
times as much unpaid care work as men. And so
we're doing more work outside of our kind of professional capacity,
which makes it harder also to balance work and responsibilities
(06:55):
within our professional capacity.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
So when you're meeting with the companies that want to
make a change, are they valuing that, How do they
handle that unpaid stuff? And do they value it? Do
they want to compensate women for it? Is there a
change in attitude.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I think it's more of a recognition that it does happen.
I don't think they certainly want to compensate women for it.
Sometimes it is a barrier where they need to understand
what is happening, for example, providing childcare or childcare, flexibility
and options so that more women can enter the workplace,
or maybe they're in the workplace but they're part time
(07:38):
and they want to shift to full time. So those
are challenges, particularly during COVID and post COVID, that I
think more employers have started to explore. But it's more
of a recognition and what we see in the data
is that there's actually quite a bit of bias against mothers.
So when you compare a woman with children to a
woman without children, a woman with children is monemuch less
(08:00):
likely to get the job, much less likely to get promoted.
Now the reverse is true for men. There's a fatherhood bonus.
When you compare men with children to men without children,
men with children are more likely to get the job,
more likely to get promoted, more likely to get paid highly,
and the impact goes up the more children the man has.
So we're penalizing mothers for having children and being perhaps
(08:21):
two active parents, and we are giving benefits or kind
of when you dig underneath and kind of ask why
kind of these fathers are getting higher pay it's they're
viewed as more stable, more trustworthy, more likely to stay
with the company. Perhaps they need more income to kind
of provide for their children. But the same is not
you know, true or viewed in the same way for women.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
So are you seeing maybe you don't have this information,
but then are you are women aware of it? And
are you seeing more women say Okay, either I'm not
going to tell you about my family, or I'm simply
not going to have a family, or I'm going to
wait to have a family. Are you seeing any of
those things?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I think women are increasingly aware of it. I do
know a number of women in competitive jobs, even in
kind of raising funds for their entrepreneurial invavors, who will
hide their pregnancy until the very last moment or you know,
completely if they can. And other women kind of making
different choices of you know, maybe I will delay having
(09:23):
kids until I'm in a more flexible place or have
more options, or perhaps as you describe, not have children
at all. So we have seen the birth rate or
the fatality rate for women around the world in developed
countries dropped dramatically. Right first it was in Asia, South Korea, Japan,
and China. Now we're actually seeing that across the US
(09:45):
and Europe for a while now as well as other countries.
Even India, the birth rate has dropped pretty dramatically.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Can you go back for a second to the experience
capital and if there is a delay or a differentiation,
how do women catch up to that? What kinds of
things can they do?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Absolutely so experience capital and those gaps. In fact, how
individuals can build experience capital faster is the whole focus
of the book. Right, how do we as individuals take action,
make different decisions so that we are keeping our experience
capital learning curves deep and keeping it you know, see
that each pivot point across a career. And so what
(10:26):
can women do? The number one thing women and men
can do is actually pick the right company. When you
pick the right company, that's correlated with fifty percent higher
lifetime income. And the right company does three things. Number One,
it invests in your learning and development, and that could
be a percentage of time, you know, twenty percent of
(10:46):
your time, ten percent of your time, or a strong
training culture or training programs. Second, it focuses on cross
functional rotations. So you're not going to start in finance
and end their thirty five years later. You will rote
tat around. Maybe you start in finance, you go into
the business, you come back to HR, but you're learning
the industry from different perspectives, and you're building your skills
(11:09):
in that experience capital and stretching yourself over time. And third,
great companies will also have a clear strategy, and you
can usually tell that even outside in based on how
they're performing relative to their competitors. So those three factors,
if you can look outside but even before you accept
an offer, those are the kinds of companies that build
leaders that are going to stretch your experience capital really well.
(11:33):
And ideally you pick a company like that early on
in your career because then you have your entire career
to benefit from those skills. But that is the number
one thing that you can do. I would say a
second thing would be getting into the power alley and
getting experience there.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Right, what is the power alley?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
So the power alley is what some might call staying
close to the cash register in a company or an industry.
How does your company make money? And if you can
get into the power alley and learn how your company
and how your industry does that, even for two three years,
that will help you across an entire career. So just
(12:13):
over a third of men start in the power alley.
Just under a third of women do, and it's correlated
with twenty percent higher lifetime income. But just getting that
experience is critical to your trajectory.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And can you explain what some of those jobs are
in the power alley? Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, yeah, So a power alley, let's say, in a
tech firm would be in product development, product management. In
a law firm, it would be being a lawyer. In
most companies, it's in sales or distribution. Right, how do
you kind of create revenue? In a consulting firm, it
would be being a consultant. But basically, how do you
sell and make money? And what is this specific function
(12:51):
or group that does that? That is the power alley
of your organization.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
And in those same examples, what are jobs that are
not in the power ally?
Speaker 2 (13:02):
So interestingly, being in tech but in a law firm
is not in the power alley, right, Being in tech
in a tech firm is in the power alley. So
a support function would not be in the power alley
because you're supporting other groups. You're supporting the primary group
that's out there doing sales or you know, customer development
for example.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
So I feel like what I'm hearing you say, is
you almost want to skip the first piece of an
entry level job. So does that mean more education because
you can't go in to a law firms as a
lawyer in that role unless you've gone to law school.
So I feel like we're skipping kind of that entry
(13:43):
level position.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
I mean, everybody has to get that first promotion to manager.
But you bring up a great point. So this experience
capital is actually roughly fifty to fifty. So around the world,
roughly half of your lifetime income is from experience capital,
the wisdom and experience you build on the job. The
other half is from your education and the characteristics you
(14:06):
bring to your first job. So if you think about
that fifty to fifty, it will differ by person, it
will differ by occupation. So your example of a lawyer, doctor, engineer,
right jobs where it requires quite a bit of education
to even get that first job in the occupation. In
those occupations, more of your lifetime income on average will
(14:27):
come from your education, versus if you're a plumber or
a waitress, more of your lifetime income will come from
experience capital. Can I learn how to be a manager
of other plumbers or start my own business in this space?
That will determine more of lifetime income.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
And does that change or let me see if I
can figure out how to phrase this question to capture
what I'm thinking is does.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
That change.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Early in your career later in your career? In other words,
if you're someone who has a lot of education and
you want to make a change later in your career,
does that help more than the experience? Or you used
plumber server? Do you know what I'm asking? I'm asking
sort of like it. Okay, good, thank you.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
I think what you're describing, Alita, is what we call
big bold moves. Okay, when you make a job jump
and you're really stretching yourself to learn new skills. So
I described kind of the average arc right of your
lifetime income. What we see is that women and men
on average make the same number of what we call
big bold moves. And a bold move is something that
(15:40):
really stretches your skills. You are not sure of what
you're doing because you haven't done it before. And we
measured the average what we call skill distance of a
job jump. So at that number is twenty five percent.
When you take on a new role, twenty five percent
of the skills that you use in that new job
are not skills that you used in your old job.
So twenty five percent is the average? Anything higher than
(16:03):
twenty five percent thirty forty fifty percent new skills. That
is a bold move. When you make a bold move,
that is when you are building your experience capital at
the highest rate. And that is a wonderful stretch for
your lifetime income, right, because you're growing in new ways. Yes,
it's uncomfortable, but if you can frame it in a
positive way of I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm stretching myself.
(16:26):
This is really healthy for me. It's probably the best
thing I can do for my experience capital. That's a
great thing. And what we saw in the data, interestingly,
is that women and men do the same number of
bold moves, roughly one point seven per decade, and that
was encouraging. But what is different between women and men
is when women do a bold move, they're more likely
(16:47):
to either stay at the same income or decrease their
income quintile and men are much more likely to make
a bold move and increase their income quintile. And now,
if you do that knowingly, right, let's say you're trading
off salary for more flexibility because you've got more unpaid
care work at home, or if you're trading it off
for a job that's more aligned to your values, wonderful.
(17:08):
But we also see in the data some of the
things that we solve. For example, in nursing, over the
last few decades, nursing used to be male dominated, and
as nursing became more female dominated, average salaries came down.
I think there's other examples with teaching and other occupations
where we haven't seen kind of occupational pay stay the same.
(17:29):
And so making the right trade offs for you is
going to be critical. And when you do make a
bold move, make it count or at least trade off
for things that are important for you.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Right, So the bold move can be something that you're
saying twenty five percent sort of a learning curve that's
considered a bold move, but you could more. But women
are making bold moves that sometimes are lateral or for
other reasons not necessarily increasing their kind of you know,
(18:03):
not necessarily climbing the ladder. Exactly, yeah, exactly, interesting, Wow, Okay,
all right. It also makes me wonder should women just
go and work for themselves, should they become entrepreneurs more
than sticking with the company. Any research on this, I've.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Seen a number of Yeah, women do that right of
I don't want to work in a place where the
rules are set by somebody else because I don't like
the way the rules are said and I don't feel
like it's an equal playing field. So women have been
going out to be their own entrepreneurs. When they do so,
the highest success rates are when they stick close to
(18:44):
something they know well. So maybe they were in media
and advertising and they start a firm in that space. Right,
in that case, bold moves are not recommended to stay
close to kind of what you know from your past
world and start a business in that space. Unfortunately, when
they do, those businesses tend to be under resourced in
terms of bank loans. We know that only two point
(19:06):
three percent of venture capital goes to women led businesses
of just a poultry number, and so we know that
they're underfunded. And women led businesses are much more likely
to employ only one person, the woman herself much less
likes to be kind of high growth unicorns. And so
how do we also kind of equalize the playing field
both on being full time entrepreneurs but also kind of
(19:27):
funding through bank loans through venture capital and higher growth
funding sources as well, so that we're focusing on the
right kind of growth trajectory.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah, how do we do that? How do we do that?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
It's a nhe old problem. Yeah, I think both tackling
the mix of the businesses we start. Right. Women are
more likely to start retail businesses, which have like a
fifty percent failure rate. In fact, many banks don't even
lend to those areas because of such the high failure rate,
both retail strawts, etc. So we could shift the mix
(20:03):
of those as well as shift some of the bias
that we see in terms of kind of lending as
well as venture capital investment.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Is it good to change jobs a lot? Is that helpful?
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Within reason? Right?
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Too much?
Speaker 2 (20:20):
And it's a bit of like, hm, you never stick
anywhere every two three years, you're sort of jumping before
you've actually built the skills stretched yourself.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Sometimes it takes somebody who knows you to make a
bold move, which is where we talk about the multiplier
effector of networking. And so I would say fewer moves.
When you do make them moves, make them count. Right
back to these bold moves and kind of strategically considered
bold moves. So a few moves could be internal if
(20:52):
you're in the right company and they have space and
kind of new roles could be outside your current company.
Either one works, but strategically considered ones that are bold moves,
stretching your skills and ideally at some point in your
first ten years in that power alley right where your
company and industry is making money.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Okay, I have a question for you for male versus
female leaders and if you are a manager or looking
to get promoted be a manager, is there any data
that says you're going to have more success if you
have a male boss versus a female boss or the
other way around, or is it equal.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
I don't know on promotion rates. What we've seen in
some of our women in the workplace data is that
there's a broad distribution of female and male managers. On average,
female managers are more likely between four and eleven percentage
points more likely to support your learning goals, kind of
give you a step up opportunity, help you set boundaries
(21:55):
and balance life and work. Frankly, things that you know,
since COVID, we find are increasingly important. I would say, frankly,
the rate at which both male and female managers do
those things is far too low. I wish you know
both distributions were shifted up dramatically, but women managers on
average do those things a bit more. So that is helpful.
(22:16):
The other piece, though, is we found feedback for women
and people of color is both. It's just less tough
feedback is received, and that is from both male managers
and female managers. And when we ask why, right, like,
you have both men and women on your team, you're
clearly developed. You know you're delivering the tough feedback to
(22:37):
the men, but the women are not getting that same
tough feedback. And when we dig underneath and ask why,
the answer is typically around I don't want to appear mean,
and I'm afraid of an emotional reaction. I'm afraid of tears.
And so if we as women are not getting that
tough feedback of quailan here's what you need to learn
to run the business or to get to the next level,
(22:57):
then it's going to be really challenging to learn and
grow to build experience capital at that same rate.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
I know you talk about AI in the book, and
we have to talk about AI, right, everyone's talking about
it is that helpful to women, not helpful to women,
not helpful.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
On average, it is impacting women's jobs fifty percent more so,
women are fifty percent more likely to have to switch
jobs in the next five to ten years because we
are so concentrated in the shrinking jobs Generative AI. But
we also added demographic trends, which are shifting quickly, as
well as consumption trends. Partially as a result of those
(23:36):
demographic trends. All of those things together are growing jobs
a few jobs pretty dramatically, and they're shrinking other jobs
also pretty dramatically. And so to your question, women are
concentrated in three of the four fastest shrinking occupations, which
is why we're fifty percent more likely to have to
switch occupations. So those four are customer service and sales
(24:00):
contact centers. Right, we hear a lot about digital kind
of self serve, like a lot of things going away
with Generative AI. Second is food service waiters, waitresses, bartenders.
The third is office services, so administrative assistance receptionists. We
need some, but far fewer than before, and women dominate
(24:20):
those three occupational categories. The four shrinking category is production
or manufacturing, which is more male dominated, so lots of
concentration in the shrinking jobs. The growing jobs are healthcare,
STEM and transportation, including last mile delivery, so you're Amazon's
ubers of the world. Women are concentrated in healthcare, not
(24:42):
very much in STEM, and a bit more mixed in transportation.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Is there an equivalent for men to the broken wrong?
Speaker 2 (24:50):
I think it would be earlier on in education. So
I've got three daughters, twelve, nine, and nine, and I
think in educational contexts higher rates of ADHD, you know,
harder time with grades persisting in college even if they
do get in. I think some of the challenges are
probably earlier on studying attention span, focus, executive function kinds
(25:12):
of things. And then once they get into the workplace,
we don't see the broken wrung for men. We do
see it sometimes for men of color, but for white
male colleagues less so.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
At least on average, what you know, we're talking about
all the challenges that women have and what can they do?
Then what can we tell listeners who now feel like,
oh wow, that's a lot which we knew right where
you're just giving us these the specific data, but we've
(25:44):
known that this has been a challenge for a long time.
It continues to be a challenge, But what can we
do today to help ourselves?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Absolutely, and Alita, you're right, it's easy to get depressed
with the data. I think data and knowledge is power,
so I would feel better knowing the facts around it.
And then to your point, I think there's key points
across a career. Early on in a career, I take
comfort that we actually control a lot of this. You
hope that your organization supports diversity and inclusion, but whether
(26:14):
they do or not, there's so much that you can
do in terms of your own decisions. Early on, I
would pick the right company number one. I would make calculated, strategic,
bold moves and try to move up in income when
I do so, and I would get experience in that
power alley. At the margin. Given our discussion around generative AI,
I might choose those occupations that are growing right, not shrinking.
(26:38):
And then across a career, let's say, across sort of
the middle of my career, I think there's a number
of skills that each of us can build to future
proof our career. Things are changing so quickly with generative
AIS is that we were discussing, I think networking is critical.
Women tend to be over mentored, actually people of color
as well, over mentored, undersponsored. Lots of advice, lots of discussion,
(27:02):
but when it really comes to creating opportunities that didn't
exist before, that happens less frequently for women and people
of color, and we really need to kind of equalize
that through our networks. So women are more likely to
have more narrow and more junior sponsorship networks. And because
seventy percent of jobs are not even posted, if you
don't kind of get to know what opportunities are out
(27:25):
there through your network, you're at a systematic disadvantage. So
how do we build those networks? Activate them? And women
we see in the research are more likely to be
uncomfortable mixing their personal networks and their friendships with their
work relationships. Sometimes we may start to doubt the foundation
of that friendship if we're mixing it too much with work.
Does she really like me for me or is this
(27:47):
just convenient from.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
A career perspective.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Versus, men are much more comfortable mixing the two. Right
they have a beer, they go for we play golf,
and the deal is more likely to work out because
they know each other and oh he's a good guy,
it'll be fine. And so while we're shooting ourselves in
the foot. From a networking perspective, I think men are
really kind of using that synergy there, and so building
networks across a career. Building tech skills not coding, but
(28:14):
can you become a super user and understand the impact
on your group. I think those are important skills. And
social and emotional skills, so empathy, negotiation, leading a team, right,
these are all skills that are really going to differentiate
leaders and managers over the next ten years. Women on
average have higher social and emotional skills, right, But if
(28:35):
we can build those, I think that's a huge advantage
to kind of future proof right career. So lots of
actions I think we can take.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yeah, well, I'm really seeing also something that you said
in there. I mean there's a lot that's really good.
But one real subtlety is a lot of people look
for a mentor, but they don't look for a sponsor.
And there is a difference between a mentor and a sponsor.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
There's a huge difference. And mentors share advice, but they
don't change outcomes. And I'm interested in outcomes. Is there
an opportunity. There is there a new job, a promotion,
a project, a way to kind of shine because if
not like the advice, you can get that from lots
of sources, but it's not that valuable. The sponsors are
(29:21):
worth their weight in gold, and you don't need that
many of them, right, I've had one two at any
given time. If they are doing their job, well that's
all you need. But how do you find them, cultivate them,
kind of keep that relationship strong over time?
Speaker 1 (29:37):
How did you get so interested in this? Had you
had an experience that you thought, hmm, I need to
really dig into this.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
I've been passionate about gender equality for ever as long
as I can remember. I lived in both China and
Japan growing up. I'm half Chinese, and you would think, right,
two countries in Asia graphically pretty close, but really on
different ends of the spectrum in terms of women's role
in society. So in China, you know, Mao is famous
(30:08):
for saying women hold up half the sky. There's very
little gender, you know, kind of concentration in different occupations.
And actually they have the highest rate of female self
made billionaires in the world. And then meanwhile, I was
a senior in high school in Japan, and I knew
very few women working outside of the home, and so
(30:29):
I thought, how can this be and what affects women's
different trajectories in the workplace in society? What are the
societal things that hold women back from participating more fully
in the workplace. So about eleven twelve years ago started
to do some of that research in Power of Parity
and have been involved ever since from just kind of
(30:49):
looking at the data around the world and both what
is the GDP impact, but what is the kind of
individual lives impacted? Women impacted? About both of those things
in tandem.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Did you say you had three daughters and I do
three daughters? Three daughters nine and nine. Okay, so how
are you approaching this knowing that this is what exists?
And obviously you're doing good because you're speaking out on it,
you're trying to make change, But how are you parenting
three daughters knowing that this is the world.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
I think the biggest thing is teaching them both self
confidenced earned self confidence, so giving them opportunities to earn
that for themselves, but teaching them to advocate for themselves.
I think all of the chapters talk about how you
build experience capital is by advocating for yourself right driving
your career, because nobody else can drive your career the
(31:42):
way you can for yourself, given your values and your
trade offs. And so if they can learn to advocate
for themselves, whether that's an elementary school as it is
right now or high school college, and then as they
enter the workforce, I think that will be key. And
then they are learning skills, right, the tech skills, the
social and emotional skills. I truly believe that will help
(32:03):
future proof you know, their education, but also their career
because those are things that in twenty thirty forty years
will still need, you know, quite a bit.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Yeah, yeah, wow, anything I didn't ask you that you
want to mention.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
You know, Alida, the biggest thing that surprised me in
our research was around women's health. And we were involved
in some research around women's health because we all know
women live longer than men, which is wonderful news, but
we also lived twenty five percent more years in poor
health and this was really surprising to me. So because
we're living longer and in poorer health for a longer period,
(32:41):
we spend more money on healthcare not a huge surprise.
But you combine that in terms of retirement with lower
average retirement savings. Right, we've got the majority of part
time jobs, minority of full time jobs, we have lower
average retirement savings, and we need to make that money
stretch for longer. That is just a really challenging equation
that doesn't work and results in older women in poverty,
(33:04):
but also not taking care of their health and so
on both ends of that. I'd love to inspire people
to kind of take different actions. On the retirement side,
how do we make our money work for us? It's
not just about building experience capital across the career and
maximizing your income. How do you make that money work
for you? And women are much more likely to say
(33:26):
I don't know to financial questions or not make a decision.
And when it comes to your retirement savings and financial decisions,
not making a decision is making a decision. So how
do we get more educated, more involved in our retirement
and save more frankly, so there's higher readiness. And then
on the other side, in terms of health, how do
we take our symptoms seriously, advocate for ourselves when it
(33:49):
comes to the health system and doctors, doctors who are
well intentioned but often trained on male symptoms. For example,
a heart attack when we see it in the movie
or when dot com are trained on it is like
tightness of chest. When it manifests in women, it's actually
typically feels a little bit like indigestion. So we tend
to get misdiagnosed, completely undiagnosed, and so it results in
(34:12):
higher death rates for women. So how do we advocate
for ourselves when we are feeling something and then also
save for that you know, longer years in poorer health.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
So what do you recommend? What do you recommend of
how we advocate for ourselves and then how we save
so that we're ready when we're older.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
I think it starts early, right, maximizing your IRA savings,
getting more educated, even if it's like one category every
six months or a year. How do you get involved
in your equity investments, how do you understand your retirement
and tax advantage savings, just little by little getting more involved.
And then on the health side, I think it really
(34:52):
is take your symptoms seriously. If you're not feeling like
you're getting heard by your doctor, go seek another opinion.
But you know you are the only one that can
advocate the best for your own symptoms and your own health.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Right. What I'm hearing you say across the board here
is that advocate for yourself, whether it's in the workplace,
it's your health, it's your finances, it's your education. Women
really have to step up and advocate for themselves. It
doesn't happen enough. And my question to you would be
when they do advocate for themselves, are you seeing results?
Speaker 2 (35:26):
We see results.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
It is a bit mixed.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
For example, a few years ago in the data, we
saw women start to negotiate more for themselves in terms
of title, pay right kind of benefits, and all of
a sudden, when women started to do this, they were
three times more likely to get feedback that they were selfish,
much more likely than men. And this is both from
(35:50):
you know, when they're negotiating with men and women. So
it's not just men react poorly. Women react often in
very much the same ways. So advocating for ourselves is
half the battle. Yeah, and then we need to educate
allies and others so that we're all more aware when
we're interacting with each other of you know, gender differences,
gaps and how people are perceived.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Yeah, wow, okay, so much, so much good stuff. And
like you said, it is good to know so that
you also know how to advocate or how to respond
to what's going on or make change kind of a
I don't know if this is out there for you
or if you have it in the book. I didn't.
(36:33):
I didn't get to that. But what's the responsibility of
men in this?
Speaker 2 (36:41):
I think men can be incredible allies. We cannot change
the system reactions on our own. Right when you look
at the talent pipeline, especially at senior levels, less than
one in three people reporting to a CEO in the
US is a woman, and about one out of fourteen
is a woman of color. And so if we don't
(37:02):
have male allies and other allies helping to equalize the
playing field, recognize when bias is happening, you know, help
all of these more system level changes, it's going to
take even longer to get there. And already it's it's
you know, decades in the making.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Yeah, what's next for you? Is there another book? Do
you feel now that you were this one? You've got?
Speaker 2 (37:26):
You know, what's the one and only? This was certainly
a kind of a focus of passion and kind of
a lifelong interest area. I think what's next is just
sharing the insights from the book and hoping that this
can help people across their career make better decisions for themselves.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your time, thank
you for the research, thank you for sharing you it's wonderful,
it's it's given us a lot to think about, for sure.
My pleasure
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