WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE REPORT 2025 – Part 2 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1199

WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE REPORT 2025 – Part 2 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1199

Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1199 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to pharmaveterans2017@gmail.com  for publishing your contributions here.

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Preamble

This 2-part blog post is based on Women in the Workplace report 2025, which is prepared by McKinsey & Co. and LeanIn.org. This report is in the 11th year of publication. Link to full report here. https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/people%20and%20organizational%20performance/our%20insights/women%20in%20the%20workplace%202025/women%20in%20the%20workplace%202025_final.pdf?shouldIndex=false 

In Part I of this series, we explored the Women in the Workplace 2025 report and its central message: while women have made historic gains in leadership representation, the momentum has slowed, and new challenges have emerged. Burnout is rising, ambition is dipping for the first time in the study’s history, and women continue to receive less sponsorship, fewer stretch assignments, and more scrutiny than their male peers.

This raises a critical question for 2025 and beyond: What can organizations, leaders, and society do to reverse the slowdown and build a workplace where women can thrive?

Part II – Turning the Tide: Practical Strategies to Advance Women in the 2025 Workplace

From Awareness to Action

Part II focuses on solutions, practical, research-backed, and achievable, even for organizations with limited budgets. Whether you are a CEO, a middle manager, a team leader, or an employee who wants to see your workplace become more equitable, you can play a meaningful role.

Strengthening the Career Pipeline: The First Broken Rung

The first barrier women face is not at the C-suite; it begins much earlier. McKinsey consistently highlights the “broken rung”: the first step up from entry-level to frontline management.

If fewer women move into those early leadership roles, the entire pipeline skews male, limiting representation at every level above.

How to fix the broken rung

Transparent promotion criteria: Ambiguous or subjective promotion standards often work against women. Organizations must create clear, consistent evaluation criteria and train managers in fair assessment practices. This reduces bias and increases trust.

Equal access to stretch assignments: Women routinely report being overlooked for career-defining opportunities, special projects, exposure roles, relocations, or leadership of high-visibility initiatives. Managers must actively track and distribute stretch roles instead of relying on “the usual people.”

Early leadership development: Leadership programs shouldn’t begin at mid-career. Offering training, mentoring, and role rotations early builds both skills and confidence. When women feel supported early, they stay ambitious.

The Power of Sponsorship: Moving Beyond Mentorship

One of the most powerful insights from the 2025 report is that sponsorship, not just mentorship, is the game changer.

• A mentor advises you.

• A sponsor advocates for you.

Sponsorship correlates strongly with promotions, stretch opportunities, and retention. Yet women are significantly less likely to have sponsors than men.

How organizations and leaders can close the gap

Make sponsorship an expectation of leadership: Companies can formally recognize sponsorship as part of a leader’s role — and evaluate them on it. When sponsorship becomes a KPI, behavior changes.

Match senior leaders with high-potential women: Programs don’t need to be complicated. Even small organizations can pair executives with emerging female talent, ensuring regular check-ins and advocacy moments.

Encourage informal sponsorship: Not every relationship must be assigned. Leaders should learn to “sponsor in the room” — bringing up women’s names when decisions are being made about roles, promotions, or opportunities.

Normalize cross-gender sponsorship: Some men avoid sponsoring women because they fear misinterpretation. This silence harms women. Companies can address this openly by setting clear guidelines for professional conduct, making sponsorship a normal and expected part of leadership.

Addressing Burnout and Job Insecurity: A Leadership Priority

Part I highlighted an alarming trend: burnout among women, especially senior women, is at record levels, and newer women leaders feel less secure in their roles than their male counterparts.

Burnout is not a “personal resilience” issue; it is a workplace systems issue.

How to reduce burnout effectively

Reassess workload and team staffing: Many women leaders carry “office housework”: note-taking, organizing, emotional labor, team support, and DEI responsibilities. Managers must redistribute this load fairly and recognize such contributions during reviews.

Protect flexibility: Flexible and hybrid work models significantly helped women during the last decade. Pulling back on flexibility, which many companies have done since 2023, disproportionately harms women. Flexibility does not mean less productivity; studies repeatedly show it often increases it.

Train managers in empathetic leadership: The #1 factor in workplace experience is the direct manager. Leaders who check in, listen actively, and show psychological safety dramatically lower burnout on their teams.

Create transparent communication around role stability: Uncertainty fuels anxiety. Regular strategy updates, performance expectations, and feedback loops help women, especially new leaders, feel grounded and secure.

Rebuilding Commitment to DEI: Moving from Symbolism to Substance

One of the most concerning findings from the 2025 report is that some companies are cutting back on DEI roles, budgets, and initiatives. While politically convenient, these cuts undermine long-term organizational health.

Diverse teams make better decisions, innovate more quickly, and deliver stronger financial results. Pulling back on DEI is not only a cultural risk — it is a business risk.

How to build practical, sustainable DEI initiatives

Integrate DEI into business strategy: 

Instead of standalone initiatives, DEI principles should influence hiring, performance reviews, promotions, customer strategy, and leadership expectations.

Collect and publish gender metrics: What gets measured gets managed. Companies that track representation, promotion rates, pay equity, and retention gaps are far more likely to close them.

Support employee resource groups (ERGs): ERGs shouldn’t be symbolic. Give them budgets, access to leadership, and a voice in decisions.

Invest steadily, even at a small scale: DEI does not require expensive programs. Consistency matters more than budget.

The Role of Men: Essential Allies, Essential Partners

Women cannot close gender gaps alone. The research is clear: organizations make the most progress when men are actively engaged as allies.

Practical ways men can participate

• Challenge biased comments or assumptions in meetings.

• Recommend women for opportunities.

• Share non-promotable tasks equally.

• Take flexible work themselves — normalizing its use.

• Learn to listen without defensiveness.

Gender equity is not a “women’s issue”; it is a workforce quality issue that benefits everyone.

The Individual Woman’s Perspective: Navigating the Modern Workplace

While structural change is essential, the report also highlights strategies that help individual women thrive.

Build networks inside and outside the company: Women benefit enormously from cross-functional relationships, professional groups, alumni networks, and industry associations.

Ask directly for stretch roles: Research shows men do this more often. Women who explicitly express interest in opportunities receive them more frequently.

Protect time and boundaries: Burnout recovery begins with recognizing limits and communicating them clearly.

Seek sponsors, not just mentors: A simple question, “Who can be my advocate?”, can change a career trajectory.

Sum Up

The Women in the Workplace 2025 report offers both a warning and a guide.

The warning is that progress is fragile, and current trends are reversing gains. The guide is that we now have clearer evidence than ever about what actually works.

Corporate cultures do not transform through statements; they change through daily leadership behaviors, equitable systems, and a commitment to shared success.

If business leaders want to build stronger, more innovative, more resilient organizations, advancing women isn’t optional. It is a strategic imperative.

By fixing the first broken rung, supporting ambition, reducing burnout, rebuilding DEI, and engaging men as allies, companies can turn the tide, creating workplaces where women are not just present, but thriving.

Concluded.

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For most blogs, I research from several sources which are open to public. Their links are mentioned under references. There is no intent to infringe upon anyone’s copyrights. If, any claim is lodged, it will be acknowledged and duly recognized immediately.