New 2025 data: women want the promotion as much as men do, once they get the same support
Roughly four in five women report that they are hoping for a promotion to a more senior role. Among men, the share reaches 86 percent. A 2025 Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey and LeanIn shows that once women get the same backing men already get, that six-point gap disappears entirely.
Such a result ought to put an end to a long-running argument. For ten years, the reason given for why women drop away above the director level was that they simply want it less. They step back. They put family first. Women get labeled "less ambitious," a description that shows up in talent reviews far more often than most managers would openly concede. The numbers show the drive is present, at almost the same rate, and the leftover gap is not a personality trait. It is a reaction to what women are given.
Where the figure originates
Since 2015, McKinsey and LeanIn have jointly produced Women in the Workplace, an annual look at American companies and the people who work for them. Each year's edition, including the 2025 one, polls women and men on whether they want to advance, and then looks at the other traits shared by those who say yes. Headlines have focused on the six-point difference. Underneath it sits the finding that, among employees who report the same level of manager support, sponsorship and encouragement, the gap closes to zero. Because the data comes from a survey and not a controlled experiment, it stops short of demonstrating that support produces ambition. It does show the two rising together, and it undermines the claim that women want it less when they are receiving what men receive. That same research reports that 31 percent of women starting out have a sponsor, while the figure for men is 45 percent. Support is the element that is absent, and its absence begins at the start of a career.
How it plays out in meetings
Imagine sitting in a talent review in Indianapolis. Picture yourself as a vice president weighing three candidates for an open SVP position, two of whom are men. A colleague mentions that the woman on the list "hasn't really raised her hand," even though you know her work well. In fact she has spoken up twice in one-on-ones, and on both occasions her manager simply nodded and changed the subject. The male candidates were never required to make that kind of visible bid. In meetings like this one, their sponsors advocated for them. The ambition is the same. The advocacy is not. By the close of the meeting, her name carries a question mark, and that question mark is about her, not about the manager who never carried her interest upward.
Why this matters to you
If you have ever been told you need to "want it more," you were handed the wrong explanation, most likely by someone whose own ambition was never put under scrutiny. Nothing inside you can close this gap on your own. It is a manager who says your name when you are absent from the room, a sponsor who places you on the slate, and encouragement that shows up before you have to ask. An organization either supplies these or it doesn't. Going after sponsorship is worthwhile, but understand that you are compensating for an input that was missing, not fixing something wrong with you.
Next steps
Make your wanting clear and difficult to overlook. Put it to your manager in writing: "I'd like to be considered for the next director-level role." "What would you need to see from me before you put my name forward?" Afterward, ask a senior leader from outside your reporting chain to serve as a reference once the slate is assembled. Through deliberate effort, you have assembled the kind of backing that men often get without having to ask.
Who in your Indianapolis office vouches for you when you are out of the room?