7 | WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE: THE CORPORATE PIPELINE Women are left behind from the get-go The two biggest drivers of representation are hiring and promotions, and companies are disadvantaging women in these areas from the beginning. Although women earn more bachelor’s 5 degrees than men, and have for decades, they are less likely to be hired into entry-level jobs. At the first critical step up to manager, the disparity widens further. Women are less likely to be hired into manager-level jobs, and they are far less likely to be promoted into them—for every one hundred men promoted to manager, seventy-nine women are. Largely because of these gender gaps, men end up holding 62 percent of manager positions, while women hold only 38 percent. This early inequality has a profound impact on the talent pipeline. Starting at the manager level, there are significantly fewer women to promote from within and significantly fewer women at the right experience level to hire in from the outside. So even though hiring and promotion rates improve at more senior levels, women can never catch up—we’re suffering from a “hollow middle.” This should serve as a wake-up call: until companies close the early gaps in hiring and promotions, women will remain underrepresented. If companies continue to hire and promote women to manager at current rates, the number of women in management will increase by just one percentage point over the next ten years. But if companies start hiring and promoting women and men to manager at equal rates, we should get close to parity in management—48 percent women versus 52 percent men—over the same ten years. MEN FAR OUTNUMBER WOMEN AT THE MANAGER LEVEL % OF MANAGER POSITIONS HELD BY MEN VS. WOMEN MEN WOMEN 62% 50% 38% ALL MEN ALL WOMEN 5 Women have earned at least 57 percent of all bachelor’s degrees every year since 1999, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, table 318.10, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_318.10.asp?current=yes.