Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
Uneven gender parity progress
Talent | Workplace
October 22, 2024 – Over the past ten years, women have achieved important advances across the corporate talent pipeline, particularly in senior leadership, say senior partner Alexis Krivkovich and colleagues in McKinsey’s tenth-anniversary Women in the Workplace report. Most strikingly, women comprise 29 percent of the C-suite, up 12 percentage points from 2015. Yet improvement in representation has been notably slower at the entry and manager levels. And, at every stage of the corporate ladder, women comprise less than half the workforce.
To read the report, see “Women in the Workplace 2024: The 10th-anniversary report,” September 17, 2024.
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Visual form
Multi-panel line-and-area chart sequence.
Layout / body structure
The chart is built as a vertical stack of small charts, one for each corporate level from entry level through the C-suite. It is read top to bottom by seniority, with each strip running left to right from 2015 to 2024.
What is being compared
It compares women’s representation across six role levels over time, showing how the share of women changes as careers move up the corporate ladder.
Measurement system
The reader tracks percentages, with each panel using the same time span and a dashed 50 percent parity line as the main reference point. Endpoint labels show where each role level lands by 2024.
Visible structure inside the graphic
Each role level has its own filled trend strip with a line running through time, so the viewer can compare both slope and ending level across panels. The consistent small-multiple structure makes the drop from one rung to the next visually obvious.
Main takeaway from the visual
The chart shows progress, but it also shows that progress narrowing as seniority rises. Entry-level representation approaches parity, while the upper-management and executive panels remain much lower and never reach the 50 percent reference line.
Key standout values or extremes
By 2024, entry level sits at about 47 percent, managers around 39 percent, senior managers and directors about 36 percent, vice presidents about 34 percent, and both senior vice presidents and the C-suite around 28 percent. The largest visible gap is between near-parity entry hiring and the much lower executive endpoints.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
This is a static chart image with no in-chart controls to operate.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the chart image is the full visual on this page.