Pharma Veterans

Female CEOs Shortage – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1225 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1225 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. Credit: Alena Darmel Credit: Theo Decker Preamble This blog post is based on a recent INSEAD article. Link at the end. Why the Female CEO Shortage Persists – and What Leaders Must Do About It Despite decades of diversity commitments, women remain dramatically under-represented in the world’s top corporate seat. Even in major markets in 2025, women hold only a small fraction of CEO roles across leading companies such as the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250, a stagnation that persists despite a clear pipeline of capable female leaders. This gap isn’t due to a lack of talent. High-performing women are already delivering results at senior levels. The real challenge lies in how org...

WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE REPORT 2025 – Part 1 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1198 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1198 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. Credit: Anna Tarazevich 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  Part I: Corporate Gender Equality at a Crossroads in 2025 Introduction: A Decade of Progress Meets New Challenges In 2025, Women in the Workplace, the largest annual study of women’s represe...

Gender Pay Equity – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1164 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1164 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. Credit: Carolina Basi Credit: Hong Son Credit: Mikhail Nilov Credit: Thibault Luycx Credit: Tony Nomjansk Preamble This post is based on various reports on this subject. Closing the 20% Gap: The Urgent Case for Gender Pay Equity Despite decades of advocacy, women around the world still earn, on average, 20 percent less than men for equivalent work. That means women receive only 80 cents for every dollar paid to men—a global wage gap that persists even after accounting for differences in roles, education, or experience. UN Women has intensified its call to close this gap, not merely as a moral imperative but as a vital economic necessity. Why the 20 % Gap S...

Understanding and Resolving Gender Pay Gap – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1107 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1107 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. Credit: Ivan Samkov Credit: Ketut Subiyanto Credit: Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz Preamble Despite decades of progress in gender equality, a significant earnings gap between men and women continues to persist in the workforce. The latest report by the McKinsey Global Institute, ‘Tough Trade-offs: How Time and Career Choices Shape the Gender Pay Gap’, offers a fresh, data-driven perspective on why this disparity endures. By analyzing more than 86,000 real-life career trajectories of U.S. workers, the study presents a compelling case: nearly 80% of the gender pay gap stems from differences in how work experience is accumulated, and the types of career pa...

Broken Rung for Women in the Workplace – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1106 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1106 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. Credit: Antoni Shkraba Studio Credit: RDNE Stock Project Credit: Vlada Karpovich Preamble The journey of professional advancement is rarely linear, especially for women. Despite strides in education and employment, one stubborn barrier continues to hinder women’s rise in the workplace: the broken rung. This metaphorical broken step on the career ladder represents the first critical promotion from entry-level roles to management—and it is where women’s progress often falters. In their insightful book, *The Broken Rung: When the Career Ladder Breaks for Women—and How They Can Succeed in Spite of It*, McKinsey senior partners Kweilin Ellingrud, Larein...

Women in the Workplace 2024 – The 10th Anniversary Report – Gender Parity and Equity – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1010 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1010 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Edmond Dantès Credit: Jopwell Credit: Ron Lach Preamble Women in the workplace is the largest study on the state of women in corporate America. The findings however can be applied with some variations to other countries. Europe is behind already, and Asian/ African countries are far behind in working towards equal participation of women across the line of command. The study was launched in 2015 by LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Co.; current report is the 10th anniversary report. Over the last 10 years, more than 1,000 companies have participated in the study, and over 480,000 people were surveyed on th...

Evolving Role of Middle Managers – More Coaching – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #998 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #998 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Annushka Ahuja Credit: Antoni Shkraba Credit: Kampus Production This blogpost is inspired by HBS Working Knowledge article by Ben Rand, which is based on research by Letian Zhang, Assistant Professor of Business Administration. Most content is my own. Link to the article at the end. Hierarchies have become inflated and multilayered, and it has become difficult to identify if someone is a senior manager or a middle manager. When I joined pharma industry, the line management was a two-tier structure. There were the first line managers, and the national managers. The regional managers had different titles, district manager, zonal manager, re...

Professor Dr. Claudia Goldin – Winner of Nobel Prize 2023 for Economic Sciences – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #892 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #892 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans  aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Professor Dr. Claudia Goldin Credit: Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz Credit: Swastik Arora News – Claudia Goldin Wins Nobel in Economics for Studying Women in the Workforce – New York Times Similar news flashed across many platforms as Professor Goldin was chosen for Nobel Prize. She is only the third woman to have won the Nobel Prize in Economics, and the first one to win it solo. Nobel Prize carries a prize amount of 11 million Swedish crowns (US$ 986,000) besides being the highest award recognizing the most valuable contributio...

Women in Workplace 2021 – Last Part – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #547 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #547. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… McKinsey & Company in collaboration with LeanIn.org has been collecting data and publishing a yearly study on the status of Women in Workplace. The 2021 report is the sixth year’s report which was published in September 2021. [Link appears at the end] We have seen till now that women in workplace have limited gains and host of challenges. We may sum up as follows. Gain – some gain can be seen in that women have claimed slightly more space in the leadership arena. This gain is significant but not universal. The gain is patchy because it varies ...

Women in Workplace 2021 – Part 2 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #546 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #546. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… McKinsey & Company in collaboration with LeanIn.org has been collecting data and publishing a yearly study on the status of Women in Workplace. The 2021 report is the sixth year’s report which was published few days ago. [Link appears at the end] Profession Biases – Another discrimination that women face everywhere is the profession bias. For example, women are discouraged from working in engineering jobs, even when these may not be hard ones. It is just a bias that has been there all along. While women are preferred in packaging jobs, they are n...