McKinsey's "Women In The Workplace" Report Obscures What Companies Are Actually Doing To Women

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/aparnarae/2025/12/18/mckinseys-women-in-the-workplace-report-obscures-what-companies-are-actually-doing-to-women/

By Aparna Rae, Contributor.
I’m a serial entrepreneur building an inclusive future of work.
Dec 18, 2025, 09:00am EST



Emphasis theirs.

When McKinsey and LeanIn.Org released their annual Women in the Workplace report earlier this month, the headline seemed measured, almost cautious: "Corporate America risks rolling back progress for women."

Read the data closely, and a different story emerges. This isn't about "risk" or companies passively "losing focus." The 2025 report, despite its carefully neutral framing, documents something more troubling: corporations are making deliberate choices that harm women's advancement, and they're doing it at scale.

Even more concerning, the report systematically avoids examining the populations most affected by these choices: women caregivers, women over 40, women with disabilities, and women in roles vulnerable to AI displacement and layoffs. What McKinsey presents as a study of "women in the workplace" is actually a study of women who've managed to survive in workplaces increasingly hostile to anyone with caregiving responsibilities or flexibility needs.

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The 2025 report provides the evidence: Companies are actively choosing policies that harm women's advancement. They're doing it while women's job security concerns are at five-year highs. They're doing it while systematically excluding women from AI upskilling. They're doing it despite knowing - from McKinsey's own data - that removing these supports tanks women's ambition.

Corporate dipshits!