New 2025 data: women want the promotion as much as men do, once they get the same support
Eighty percent of women want a promotion. Eighty-six percent of men do. Per the 2025 Women in the Workplace report produced by McKinsey alongside LeanIn, once women are given the same backing men already enjoy, that six-point distance disappears entirely.
For years, the reason given for why women thin out above director level was that they simply wanted it less. They step back. They put family first. They are "less ambitious," a line repeated in more talent reviews than anyone would ever admit under oath. The numbers, read closely, point somewhere else. The drive is present at almost the same rate, and what remains is not a personality trait. That response grows out of the way people are treated at work.
Source of the statistic
Women in the Workplace is a yearly study of American corporate employers and their staff, conducted by McKinsey and LeanIn since 2015. The 2025 survey poses the question of whether they aim to climb to women and men alike, and then looks at what else is true among those who say yes. What grabs attention first is the six-point difference. Look underneath, and the real discovery is that for workers who describe equal coaching from their managers, sponsorship and encouragement, the gap falls to nothing. Because this comes from a survey and not a controlled experiment, it stops short of proving that support causes ambition. It does show the two rising together, and it undermines the claim that women want it less when they are getting what men get. That same study also showed that 31% of women at the entry level have a sponsor, while the figure for men is 45%. Support is what is missing, and it goes missing early.
What it looks like in the room, as seen at a Lakewood planning session.
Imagine sitting in a talent review in downtown Cleveland. Imagine you are a vice president in Greater Cleveland, and three candidates sit on the shortlist for a senior vice president opening, two of whom are men. A colleague offers that the woman on the list "hasn't really put herself forward." You happen to know her well. In fact she has put herself forward twice during one-on-one meetings with a manager who simply nodded and carried on. The men on the list never had to raise theirs, because their sponsors did it for them in rooms like this one. Her ambition is the same. The advocacy is not. By the end of the meeting, her name has a question mark beside it, and that question mark is about her, not about the manager who never carried her interest upward.
What this signals for your career
If you have ever been told you need to "want it more," you were handed the wrong diagnosis, likely by someone whose own desire was never questioned. The factor that would close this gap is not something an individual can generate on their own. It is a manager who speaks your name when you are absent, a sponsor who puts you forward for consideration, and encouragement that arrives before you have to ask. It is something organizations choose to offer, or choose not to. You are free to hunt for these resources yourself, but recognize that you are compensating for a missing ingredient rather than fixing a shortcoming in yourself.
What comes after
Make your intentions unmistakable and difficult to miss. Send your manager a written note that reads: "I would like to be considered for the next director-level position." "What would you need to see from me before you would put my name forward?" Then identify one senior leader outside your reporting chain, perhaps someone in Westlake or Shaker Heights, and ask them to vouch for you when the shortlist is assembled. You will have built, by hand, the support men receive by default.
In your company, who speaks your name when you are out of the room?