New 2025 data: women want the promotion as much as men do, once they get the same support
Four out of five women report wanting a promotion, according to the survey data. Eighty-six percent of men say the same. The 2025 Women in the Workplace report, produced by McKinsey together with LeanIn, indicates that once women get the identical backing men already enjoy, that six-point distance disappears entirely.
For years, the standard explanation for why women thin out above the director level was that they simply want it less. They step back. They put family first. They are called "less ambitious," a label that appears in more talent reviews than anyone would readily confess to. The evidence now points elsewhere: the drive is present at almost the same rate, and what remains is not a personality trait but a reaction to circumstances.
Source of the statistic
Women in the Workplace is an annual study of US corporate employers and their staff, produced by McKinsey and LeanIn since 2015. The 2025 edition asks women and men whether they hope to advance, then examines what else is true of those who answer yes. What jumps out first is that six-point spread between the two groups. Beneath it sits the key finding: among employees who report equal backing from managers, sponsorship and encouragement, the gap shrinks to zero. Because this comes from a survey and not a controlled experiment, it stops short of demonstrating that backing causes ambition to grow. It does show that the two rise together, and that the claim "women want it less" falls apart once women are getting what men get. That same research also showed that 31% of women starting out have a sponsor, while the share for men starting out is 45%. Early on, the backing is what disappears, and it disappears before most people notice.
What this looks like in practice
Picture yourself in a talent review in Sacramento, weighing who deserves the next promotion. You are a vice president, and the shortlist for an open senior vice president role carries three names, two of them men. Someone remarks that the woman on the list "hasn't really put her hand up." You know better. You have brought up your interest twice in one-on-one meetings, and your manager simply nodded before changing the subject. The men on the list never needed to raise theirs; their sponsors voiced their interest for them in rooms much like this one. The ambition is the same on both sides. The advocacy is not. By the close of the meeting, her name carries a question mark, and that question mark is aimed at her rather than at the manager who never carried her message upward.
How this affects your career
If you have ever been told you need to "want it more," you were handed the wrong diagnosis, most likely by someone whose own wanting was never put under scrutiny. Closing the gap does not depend on fixing something within you. It is a manager who names you when you are absent, a sponsor who puts you forward for consideration, and encouragement that arrives before you have to ask for it. Either an organization provides these resources or it fails to. You are free to seek them out on your own, though keep in mind that you are filling in for a missing resource rather than correcting a shortcoming of your own.
What comes next
State your ambition clearly enough that no one in the room can miss it. Write to your manager directly: "I would like to be considered for the next director-level role that opens up." What would you need to see from me to put my name forward?" Then ask one senior leader outside your reporting line to serve as a reference when the shortlist is drawn up. Through deliberate effort, you will have assembled the kind of backing that men often receive without having to ask.
Who in your organization says your name when you are not there?