5 min read / December 15 2025

Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back

Picture of Geraldine Gallacher | Founder Geraldine Gallacher | Founder

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This week's Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey and Lean In offers a sharp and timely correction to the emerging narrative about gender equity.

After a decade of steady progress, the scorecard shows women's advancement has stalled. For the first time, an ambition gap has opened between women and men, widest at entry level. Sponsorship has declined, fewer companies prioritise progression, and early-career women get less access to the AI tools and stretch assignments that build leaders.

This may be a US study and one year's data doesn't make a trend. But it's difficult to see this as anything other than a signal of a shift backwards.

For evidence of this, we only have to look at where we are today in the conversation about gender equity. From the settled position that we have made too little progress, the framing is now that we have expended too much effort.

In the US, 2025 will close with debates raging about the 'over-feminisation' of the workplace with Ross Douthat's New York Times podcast asking whether liberal feminism has 'ruined' work and Helen Andrews' essay 'The Great Feminization' claiming female-dominated institutions become less effective.

In the UK, there's a growing belief that men are being asked to shoulder too much in the name of equality and that efforts to promote gender equity have tipped into discrimination against them.

I've felt this shift directly. One person I know - a former senior finance leader - recently asked why I'm still 'going on about' gender equity. Don’t women run the world now?

These questions no longer feel fringe. Anti-“woke” voices are gaining traction, with growing scepticism directed at the data used to track progress. The pushback against McKinsey’s latest Women in the Workplace report illustrates this shift, as critics question the credibility of the numbers and dismiss evidence of stalled progress as ideological.

And yet by any metric that matters, we are nowhere near where we should be.

Look at the boardroom, the C-suite, the investment committees, the partnership tables. In every major sector, women remain significantly under-represented in positions where decisions get made and power is exercised. The data is unarguably consistent: progress up until now has been real but incremental. Women in positions of power remain the outliers.

As the spotlight has moved away from arguments for gender equity the will to hold ourselves accountable appears to be slipping too.

The decade leading to 2025 was marked by proactive cross-industry work to understand the persistent blockers to gender equity: government initiatives, industry bodies, and individual organisations all working to address the glacial progress we have made on women's representation and progression to leadership.

Reports were published, data tracked, and the business press and mainstream media gave the issue significant airtime. It wasn't perfect, but it created accountability and kept the issue live with a consensus that we can and must do better.

Now, attention has shifted. Media coverage now focuses overwhelmingly on 'DEI wars' where the arguments are about cultural issues rather than structural barriers. This hasn’t just distorted perceptions but has obscured what matters most: who gets promoted, who stays and who holds power as result.

In these culture war conversations, it’s not just women but every underrepresented group that loses out: ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ people, those from lower-income households. The zero-sum framing of equity helps ensure the real barriers to power stay firmly in place.

This is why McKinsey’s report this week and the continuing work of The 30% Club and Women on Boards in the UK matters more than ever.

Their data provides the evidence we need: the counter to leadership teams who believe enough has been done, to contacts who wonder why we're 'still going on about that gender equity thing', to sceptical colleagues and to the narratives claiming we've overcorrected that fuel that thinking. The numbers don't lie, they show plainly where we are.

And they remind us of something critical. There is no default towards equity, the opposite is true. If attention shifts and pressure eases, systems revert to their defaults. If we're not moving forward, we're going backwards. There is no standing still.

So to return to that recent conversation I had with that senior leader from finance: Yes, I really do wish I wasn't still talking about this. But until the numbers tell a different story, the conversation isn't finished. Not by a long way.

Opinion

Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace – New York Times

How modern organisations have traded efficiency for emotional governance

The Great Feminization – The Compact

Helen Andres on the impact of female-dominated workplaces

Did women ruin the office? Maybe for the boys club - Fast Company

An alternative take on the femisation of the workplace

DEI needs depth not death – The Conversation

An argument for tackling structural barriers to equity

Winter is coming for DEI die-hards – Spiked

Expect more pressure on diversity champions

News