Indian women at work: Broken rungs & glass cliffs

THIS YEAR, AS International Women’s Day approaches, I am bombarded with the usual array of celebratory discounts, optimistic story ideas, and statistics suggesting things might just be looking up for female professionals.

- ANVITII RAI

But is it truly so?In this age, an increasing number of women in the workforce is no longer a sufficient metric. Rather, their progress through the corporate ladder is pertinent—and the numbers do not tell an uplifting story. A 2025 McKinsey & Co survey of 77 domestic companies found that while the male-to-female ratio of university students is near parity, women hold one in three entry-level positions. The drop at the first promotion stage is known as the “broken rung’—and women make up just 24% at the managerial level, 20% at the board level, and only 17% in the C-suite. A Great Place to Work India report also finds that a mere 8% of Indian CEOs are women, meaning the corporate ladder for women often resembles a funnel. However, the report also points out that while the attrition rate for entry-level female employees is 1.3 times that of their male counterparts, female senior VPs are less likely to leave.