Kweilin Ellingrud, Lareina Yee, and María del Mar Martínez are friends, colleagues, and passionate advocates for advancing women in business and society. They are senior partners at McKinsey & Company, supporting clients in different industries and geographies. Each has served as McKinsey’s chief diversity and inclusion officer.
What’s the big idea?
McKinsey senior partners Kweilin Ellingrud, Lareina Yee, and María del Mar Martínez reveal how the biggest obstacle to women’s career advancement isn’t the glass ceiling—it’s the missing first promotion. Despite excelling in education, women fall behind early, with fewer advancing to managerial roles, creating a gap that compounds over time. Through a decade of research and insights from top leaders, the authors show how women can build “experience capital” to level the playing field and maximize their earning potential. A powerful guide for individuals and organizations alike, this book offers actionable strategies to break through career barriers and reach new heights.
Below, co-authors Kweilin Ellingrud, Lareina Yee, and María del Mar Martinez share five key insights from their new book, The Broken Rung: When the Career Ladder Breaks for Women–and How They Can Succeed in Spite of It. Listen to the audio version—read by Lareina and María—in the Next Big Idea App.
1. We need to confront the broken rung before we can conquer the glass ceiling.
Most of us are familiar with the “glass ceiling,” the idea that an invisible barrier at the top of the corporate ladder prevents women from becoming executives. Over the last 30 years, women have gone from representing 3 to 5 percent to 29 percent of the C-suite—a significant shift but still not close to parity.
However, before women even come close to the C-suite, they have to overcome the broken rung in the first step of the career ladder. What is the broken rung? It is a fact that while women earn undergraduate and graduate degrees at higher rates than men, they immediately lose ground when they enter the corporate workforce. At the first promotion to manager, their odds of advancement are lower; for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 81 women are. And this broken rung effect is even worse for women of color. This gap has been stubbornly persistent for the last decade and compounds as women advance to director level and beyond.
2. The remedy to the broken rung is experience capital.
How can women overcome the broken rung? Our research shows that the key is building experience capital, or the knowledge, skills, attributes, and experiences we collect on the job. The amount of experience capital you can accumulate over the course of a career is unlimited, and there are many ways to continue building it.
On average, globally, about 50 percent of our lifetime earning potential comes from the skills we bring to the table from completing our education, and the other 50 percent comes from our experience capital. And while women achieve that educational entry point at par or ahead of their male peers, they build experience capital more slowly—undermining their ability to maximize their career potential and lifetime earnings.
“The amount of experience capital you can accumulate over the course of a career is unlimited.”
It’s not that women are less ambitious than men: 81 percent of men and women say they are interested in being promoted to the next level. Rather, women have fewer opportunities to make bold moves or to develop new skills on the job, and face unique challenges that drive different decision making than men.
3. Join the “Power Alley” to accelerate experience capital.
Roles with line responsibility—that is, leadership roles and roles with profit and loss responsibilities—open up opportunities to build experience capital more quickly. Those who start in line roles typically earn more than those in support roles, hold more power, and have greater opportunities to advance. They also have more chances to shift into staff roles later, whereas staff employees have fewer opportunities to explore line roles.
We see this play out in the data: Only 1 out of 10 P&L leaders are women, impacting their advancement to the C-suite. While women now make up 29 percent of the overall C-Suite (although much less for Fortune 500 companies), women are much more likely to lead support functions such as HR or Legal.
To position yourself for a power alley role, be strategic: Define the specific role you are aiming for, identify the key competencies required, build a gameplan to gain those skills and experiences, and activate your network to support you.
The path to a power alley role isn’t always straightforward. Take Amy Weaver: Amy grew up in a family of lawyers and joined a corporate law firm after graduation. While on the verge of making Partner, she felt like something was missing from her work. She took a leap and accepted an in-house role at Expedia, which brought her new responsibilities and hands-on technology experience in an industry that excited her. The skills she built there ultimately led her to the C-suite at Salesforce, where she owned critical decisions as Chief Legal Officer, and ultimately became Salesforce’s CFO. While it was unorthodox for the head of legal to become the head of finance, the diverse skillset and strong support network that Amy had built throughout her career positioned her well for a challenging role with enormous impact.
4. Everyone needs to be a technologist.
Technology is a core piece of nearly every role in today’s workplaces, making it increasingly challenging to advance your career without tech skills. GenAI and automation are reshaping the way that work gets done; employers estimate that 44 percent of their workers’ skills will be disrupted by technology in the next 5 years. This trend means that women, who are often underrepresented in tech roles, risk missing out on opportunities to build their experience capital.
“Consider setting aside 10 percent of your workweek—about four to five hours—to develop these skills.”
AI and digital skills, programming, analytics, tech design, and research can help women from all career backgrounds advance their professional journeys. Take Karlie Kloss: As a child, Karlie was passionate about math and science, but her life took a surprising turn when she was scouted by a modeling agent. While she built a successful career as a model, she was inspired by connections who were transforming entire industries with their technology skills. In 2015, she signed up for a coding boot camp and found that her new tech skills allowed her to expand her career: She founded Kode with Klossy—a nonprofit that has now taught tech and coding skills to nearly 10,000 girls and gender-expansive teens.
Consider setting aside 10 percent of your workweek—about four to five hours—to develop these skills through continuous learning or online courses and explore tech or tech-adjacent roles within your organization.
5. Entrepreneurship is a skill, not a profession.
When we hear the word “entrepreneur,” most of us imagine someone who has struck out on their own and founded a company. While that is, of course, one very visible form of entrepreneurship, it’s not the only one. We think of entrepreneurship as a set of skills you can deploy across various roles—skills like courage and risk-taking, driving change and innovation, energy, passion, optimism, and breaking orthodoxies.
These are required for a founder, but regardless of your role, they are critical for advancing your career. Within a role in an existing organization, entrepreneurship can look like taking initiative, starting a new project, identifying fresh opportunities for impact, or creating a team. It can also look like becoming an independent worker or contractor or taking over an existing business.
Since it is not measurable or directly tied to education, being entrepreneurial is considered a “soft skill” and will be in even greater demand in the future.
Like other soft skills, entrepreneurship is not easy for technology to master. We still need humans to identify opportunities and come up with new ideas, even if they rely on technological tools to help carry out some of those plans. Look for opportunities to strengthen your entrepreneurial toolkit: build your foresight by identifying patterns; invest in your network and unearth new opportunities; and practice constant curiosity.
To listen to the audio version read by co-authors Lareina Yee and María del Mar Martinez, download the Next Big Idea App today:
