Broken Rung: How Women Can Overcome It to Reach Their Full Potential at Work

The broken rung is more pervasive than the glass ceiling in holding women back from career success. Three McKinsey senior partners offer strategies for overcoming it and fulfilling your potential.

Women around the world do extremely well when it comes to their education. They graduate at higher rates than men and have higher average GPAs. But then a strange thing happens: upon entering the workforce, they immediately lose their advantage. When the first promotions come around, the slide continues. For every 100 men promoted to manager, only 81 women overall and 77 women of color get promoted.

This is what McKinsey senior partners Kweilin Ellingrud, Lareina Yee, and María del Mar Martínez call ＂the broken rung,＂ and its effects compound throughout women’s careers, causing them to fall behind at the start and keeping them from catching up. In this groundbreaking book, the authors reveal the problem’s underlying cause: while about half of a person’s lifetime earnings come from education and half from work experience, men get more value from their experience than women do. It is also here, in one’s work experience, that the solution lies: women need to build their ＂experience capital＂ to level the playing field and maximize their earning potential.

The book combines over a decade of research, personal conversations with more than fifty remarkable leaders, and the authors’ own rich experiences as leaders at McKinsey. They weave data on the potential pitfalls with inspiring and instructive stories of women who have climbed over the broken rung using strategies that increased their experience capital.

Leaders and companies must do more to address gender inequalities in the workplace. But you don’t have to wait. The Broken Rung is your guide, right now, for moving up the career ladder and reaching your full potential at work.

Kweilin Ellingrud is McKinsey’s Chief Diversity Officer and a director of the McKinsey Global Institute, based in Minneapolis. As a senior partner at McKinsey, she has led research on the topics of gender equality, racial equity, generative AI, the future of work, and global competitiveness. She also helps financial services organizations transform.

Lareina Yee is the chair of the McKinsey Technology Council and cohead of McKinsey’s Ecosystems and Alliances. Based in San Francisco, she is a senior partner leading the firm’s work in technology and AI. She served as McKinsey’s first Chief Diversity Officer and, in 2015, cofounded Women in the Workplace, an annual research study that has worked with more than 1,000 companies in understanding the barriers to women’s advancement in corporate America.

María del Mar Martínez chairs the committee that elects McKinsey’s senior partners globally. Based in Madrid, she has led McKinsey’s Risk & Resilience Practice, served as McKinsey’s Chief Diversity Officer, and actively researched global diversity topics. She was the first female partner elected in Iberia. As a senior partner, she advises financial institutions and boards on growth, transformation, risk management, and resilience.