No, don’t come raging at me! That’s not what I believe but that’s a hidden general consensus that dictates the promotion cycles everywhere and yes, its a global phenomenon. But don’t just take my word for it. An article on promotions in The Economist led me to a paper published by researchers at MIT and Yale, that showed analysis of ratings of 30,000 individuals who were on track to become managers.

The paper revealed that women were more likely to outperform their male counterparts in terms of potential, and yet they received lower ratings at the time of actual promotions. Yes, these biases still exist today! Nobody agrees to this upfront, nobody even puts it in writing on review forms, but if asked whom to promote — a manager will subconsciously almost always choose a male employee over a female one.

Think about it — women make up 50% of the freshers that start their careers every year, but only about 28% of them ever reach upper management 15 years later. And the number keeps getting smaller as the ladder grows. The same women who receive praise for their work as individual contributors, are looked over for promotions and leadership roles.

What’s worse is that even if they somehow manage to reach the top, they are considered bad managers as compared to males with the exact same management style. While the male manager is assertive, a female manager is bossy. Good traits like humility and fairness in male managers are seen as weakness and lack of decision-making in female managers. Even funny becomes trying-too-hard!

And let’s face it, men HATE it if their own manager is a woman! Not because they are not feminists or they think less of women, but they feel they are a part of a weaker or lesser or an unimportant team at work.

All of this is not unnoticed and women feel the discrimination. A Mchinsey report titled Women in the Workplace 2025 concluded that “While women are as dedicated to their careers as men, there is a gap in their desire for promotion“. This is literally the saddest statement I have read this year and there seems to be no change in sight.

However, there is a bright side to it – the numbers can only improve from here, right? The report also showed that a few top-performing companies have seen an increase in women leadership by 7 percentage points since 2021 and have seen overall positive results. So all is not lost here!

While these issues take time to resolve, change will come with the right choices leaders make today. Here’s hoping that 2026 will be the year of fairness, equality and leadership agency.

Cheers!