Broken Rung
The failure to promote women at the same rate as men into first-level management positions, creating the single largest gender gap in the corporate pipeline and limiting all subsequent progress toward leadership parity.
What Is the Broken Rung?
Key Takeaways
- ✓The broken rung is the gap in promotion rates between men and women at the first step up from individual contributor to manager, where for every 100 men promoted, only 87 women receive the same promotion.
- ✓It was identified and named by McKinsey and LeanIn.Org in their 2019 Women in the Workplace report as the largest structural barrier to gender parity in leadership.
- ✓The broken rung matters more than the glass ceiling because it constrains the entire pipeline. Fewer women in management means fewer women available for director, VP, and C-suite roles.
- ✓Women of colour face the widest gap: only 73 are promoted to manager for every 100 men.
- ✓Fixing the broken rung would add an estimated 1.5 million more women to management in Corporate America alone.
For decades, the gender equity conversation focused on the glass ceiling, that invisible barrier near the top of the corporate ladder. But McKinsey and LeanIn.Org's research revealed that the bigger problem is at the bottom of the ladder, not the top. The broken rung is the first promotion. It's the step from individual contributor to manager that companies get wrong, consistently and at scale. Here's how it works. Companies hire women and men into entry-level roles at roughly equal rates. About 48% of entry-level hires are women. But when the first round of promotions to manager comes around, men get promoted at a significantly higher rate. For every 100 men promoted or hired into management, only 87 women make the same move. For women of colour, it's 73. This isn't a small gap. It's the foundation of every subsequent gender disparity. By the time you get to the C-suite, women hold only about 28% of positions, and most of that loss happened at the first rung, not the last. The broken rung also feeds the gender pay gap. Managers earn more than individual contributors. When women are stuck at lower levels longer, the pay gap compounds with each passing year, even without any direct pay discrimination.
How the Broken Rung Shapes the Entire Pipeline
The broken rung's effect cascades through every level of the organisation. Here's what the pipeline looks like with the first rung broken.
| Level | Women's Share | Men's Share | Change from Entry Level | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry level | 48% | 52% | Baseline | McKinsey / LeanIn, 2024 |
| Manager | 39% | 61% | -9 percentage points | McKinsey / LeanIn, 2024 |
| Senior Manager / Director | 36% | 64% | -12 percentage points | McKinsey / LeanIn, 2024 |
| VP | 33% | 67% | -15 percentage points | McKinsey / LeanIn, 2024 |
| SVP | 30% | 70% | -18 percentage points | McKinsey / LeanIn, 2024 |
| C-suite | 28% | 72% | -20 percentage points | McKinsey / LeanIn, 2024 |
Why the Broken Rung Exists
The broken rung isn't caused by women lacking ambition or capability. It's driven by biased promotion processes, unequal access to opportunity, and deeply embedded assumptions about who "looks like" a manager.
Promotion based on confidence, not competence
Research consistently shows that men are more likely to be promoted based on potential while women are promoted based on proven track records. When evaluating first-time manager candidates, decision-makers often equate confidence and self-advocacy with readiness for leadership. This favours men, who are socialised to self-promote, and penalises women, who face social backlash when they do the same thing. A 2023 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that identical performance records resulted in different promotion recommendations depending on the candidate's gender.
Unequal access to stretch assignments
The projects that build a case for promotion, high-visibility assignments, cross-functional initiatives, client-facing work, aren't distributed equally. Managers often assign stretch opportunities based on who they see as a "natural fit" or who reminds them of their younger self. This informal allocation system consistently favours men, particularly in male-dominated industries. Women end up with a thinner portfolio of leadership-signalling experiences when promotion time comes.
Motherhood penalty and caregiver assumptions
The first promotion to manager often coincides with the years when women are most likely to be starting families. Even women who haven't had children face the "motherhood penalty": decision-makers assume they'll have children soon and become less available. A 2024 Pew Research study found that 42% of working mothers said they'd been passed over for a promotion or opportunity because of their parental status. Men with children, meanwhile, often receive a "fatherhood bonus", perceived as more stable and committed.
Vague promotion criteria
When promotion criteria are undefined or subjective ("leadership potential," "executive presence," "cultural fit"), bias fills the gaps. Without clear, measurable benchmarks for what qualifies someone for management, evaluators rely on gut feelings, and gut feelings tend to pattern-match toward the existing leadership profile, which is overwhelmingly male.
How to Fix the Broken Rung
Fixing the broken rung is the highest-ROI intervention in gender equity. It addresses the bottleneck that constrains every level above it.
Set clear, measurable promotion criteria
Define exactly what qualifies someone for promotion to manager. Make the criteria specific, observable, and documented. Instead of "shows leadership potential," specify behaviours: "has successfully led a project with 3+ team members," "has received positive 360 feedback from direct reports," "has completed the management development programme." When criteria are transparent, bias has less room to operate.
Require diverse candidate slates
Every promotion decision should consider at least one woman and one person of colour. This doesn't lower the bar. It expands the field. Research by Iris Bohnet at Harvard found that when a single woman is on a shortlist of three men, her odds of selection are statistically zero. When two women are on the slate, the odds normalise. The minimum is to ensure women aren't solo tokens in the candidate pool.
Audit promotion rates by gender annually
Track the ratio of women promoted to manager versus men promoted to manager, disaggregated by race and ethnicity. If the ratio consistently falls below parity, investigate why. Which departments have the worst ratios? Which managers are consistently promoting men over women? Data creates accountability that good intentions alone can't match.
Distribute stretch assignments equitably
Formalise how high-visibility projects are assigned. Create a tracking system. When a new initiative needs a lead, check who's been given opportunities recently and who hasn't. Rotate stretch assignments deliberately instead of relying on managers to distribute them informally. This ensures women build the same promotion-ready portfolio as their male peers.
The Broken Rung and the Gender Pay Gap
The broken rung is one of the largest structural drivers of the gender pay gap, and it's rarely discussed in pay equity conversations.
How it compounds
Managers typically earn 20-40% more than individual contributors. When women are promoted later or not at all, they spend more years at lower salary bands. Raises compound on a lower base. Bonus eligibility, stock options, and retirement contributions all scale with title and salary. Over a 30-year career, a 2-year delay in first promotion to manager can cost a woman hundreds of thousands of dollars in cumulative earnings, even if she eventually reaches the same level as a male peer.
Why pay audits alone aren't enough
Many organisations run annual pay equity audits comparing salaries within the same role and level. These audits are important but incomplete. They catch "equal pay for equal work" violations, but they don't capture the "equal opportunity for equal work" gap. If men are promoted faster and therefore earn more because they hold higher titles, a role-level pay audit will show no gap even though a career-level gap is enormous. The broken rung is a promotion equity problem, not just a pay equity problem.
Broken Rung Statistics [2026]
The most important data points on the broken rung and its cascading effects on gender representation in corporate leadership.
The Broken Rung Across Industries
Some industries have wider broken rungs than others. Understanding the variation helps HR teams benchmark and target their interventions.
| Industry | Women Promoted to Manager per 100 Men | Key Challenge | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technology | 82 | Male-dominated culture, vague "10x engineer" promotion criteria | McKinsey, 2024 |
| Financial services | 84 | Client-facing stretch roles disproportionately assigned to men | McKinsey, 2024 |
| Healthcare | 91 | Better pipeline but clinical vs administrative track creates side channels | McKinsey, 2024 |
| Consumer / retail | 85 | Shift-based work and inflexible schedules penalise caregivers | McKinsey, 2024 |
| Industrial / manufacturing | 79 | Smallest female talent pool, most entrenched "who you know" promotion culture | McKinsey, 2024 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is the broken rung worse than the glass ceiling?
Is the broken rung getting better or worse?
Does the broken rung affect men in female-dominated industries?
What's the fastest way to close the broken rung gap?
How does remote work affect the broken rung?
Written by Adithyan RK