Even though more women have risen to the C-suite at large corporations in recent years, women are still promoted less often than men to the highest jobs.
One of the main reasons women are less likely than men to be promoted to CEO boils down to unconscious bias, and it manifests itself in a number of noteworthy ways.
As research and strategy development nonprofit Catalyst reports, women currently hold only 30 — or 6% — of CEO positions at S&P 500 companies.
According to a 2019 report by McKinsey & Company and Lean In surveying 329 companies employing more than 13 million people, more companies have higher numbers of female C-level executives than in previous years. From 2015 to 2019, there has been a 15 percentage point increase in the number of companies who have at least three women in their C-suite, up to 44% in 2019. However, 35% of companies in 2019 had one female C-level executive or none at all.
