Where it sits
Decades of attention went to the wrong end of the ladder.
Tell it apart
| Aspect | Broken rung | Glass ceiling |
|---|---|---|
| Location | First promotion | Near the top |
| People affected | Very many | Few |
| Quantified | Precisely | Loosely |
| Fixable by quotas | Not really | Partly |
| Located | At first promotion | Near the top |
| Affects | Many | Few |
| Measured by | Promotion ratios | Board counts |
| Named | 2010s | 1978 |
Fixing the ceiling without fixing the rung leaves you promoting from a pool that already thinned at manager level. The ceiling is the more famous metaphor and has its own research behind it; the rung is the one with a promotion count published every year.
What it doesn't mean
The bottleneck is the FIRST rung. In the 2025 report, for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 93 women were. Everything above that level inherits a pipeline that has already thinned.
It is far wider by race. Per 100 men promoted to manager: 82 Asian women and Latinas, and 60 Black women. A single average conceals a range of 33 points.
What it really means
For forty years the conversation about women's careers was about the top of the ladder — boards, executive suites, the last few rungs. Then LeanIn.Org and McKinsey's annual Women in the Workplace study started counting every promotion, and found the decisive gap somewhere nobody was watching.
The very first one.
In the 2025 report: for every 100 men promoted from individual contributor to manager, only 93 women were.
Seven. That is the whole number. It sounds negligible until you notice what it is a number about — the entry to management, the step everything above it depends on. A pipeline that loses 7% at its narrowest point never makes that 7% back, because nothing above the first rung replaces the people it never let through. Every executive-level intervention is drawing from a pool that was already thinned before anyone was senior enough to be counted.
That is the argument the metaphor exists to make. A ceiling is at the top; a rung is on the ladder. Naming it broken rung was a deliberate attempt to move four decades of attention down.
And the headline figure conceals the more important finding. Per 100 men promoted to manager:
82 Asian women and Latinas.
60 Black women.
A 33-point drop from the headline figure to the lowest group, hidden inside a single average. Which is what averages do — and why the number to argue about is rarely the one in the headline.
The study has run annually since 2015, and the 2025 edition covered 124 companies and 9,500 surveyed employees, representing roughly three million people. Long enough to say something the annual coverage rarely does: the rung has been broken, and measured, and reported on, for over a decade.
Where it comes from
English
Old English hrung — a rod or crossbar; ladder step from late 13c.
Chosen specifically to relocate the problem from the ceiling to the ladder's lowest steps. It is an argument disguised as a metaphor.
- 2015
An annual Women in the Workplace study is launched, producing the data the metaphor rests on.
- 2025
The eleventh annual report covers 124 companies and surveys 9,500 employees, representing roughly 3 million people.
In real life
- The 2025 Women in the Workplace report in one line: for every 100 men promoted to their first manager role, 93 women were.
- She and a male colleague joined the same year with similar reviews; he was made team lead at the first opening, and every later promotion built on that head start.
- A company can celebrate its first female chief executive and still have a broken rung, if far fewer women than men are making the first step up to manager.
Questions
Q01What is the broken rung number?
93 women promoted to manager for every 100 men, in the 2025 Women in the Workplace report.
Q02Who publishes the research?
McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org, jointly, annually since 2015. The 2025 edition covers 124 companies and surveys 9,500 employees.
Q03Does it vary by race?
Sharply. In the 2025 Women in the Workplace report, per 100 men promoted to manager: 93 women overall, but only 82 Asian women and Latinas, and 60 Black women. The single headline figure of 93 hides a 33-point spread down to 60.