Hiring Math In 2025: 81=100 - How The Broken Rung Impacts Women at Work
- Lacie O
- Sep 29
- 5 min read
Don't have time to read the whole article? Here's the quick hits: Only 81 women get promoted to management-level roles for every 100 men, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. The hiring process is serving everyone poorly - especially talent like us. But there's hope on the horizon...
-- Lacie O
Here's a number that should make every Gen Z woman pause: for every 100 men who receive their first promotion to a management-level role, only 81 women are promoted. (And that's at the generous side of the data!) This isn't some historical artifact from the Mad Men era - this is 2024 data from McKinsey's Women in the Workplace report, tracking over 400 companies and 65,000 employees.
But here's what gets me: this isn't really about promotions at all. It's about what happens long before anyone even thinks about management roles. It's about the hiring decisions that are made when we're 22, fresh out of college, and just trying to get our foot in the door.
The "Broken Rung" Starts at the Bottom
McKinsey calls this the "broken rung" phenomenon - and it's been broken for eight consecutive years. For every 100 men promoted to their first entry-level role, only 81 women are promoted. For Latinas, its significantly worse - only 75 women; and for Black women, only 54 make it to the first rung.
What's particularly frustrating is that this gap exists despite women earning more degrees than men for over three decades. Since the 1980s and the 2000s, women have surpassed men in earning bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees across all racial and ethnic groups. So if education isn't the issue, what's happening at that crucial first step?
The answer lies in how we hire entry-level talent - those subtle biases that compound from day one.
Where it Really Starts: The Hiring Process
The promotion gap doesn't appear out of nowhere when someone hits their third year at a company. It starts with the very first "yes" or "no" decision made about a resume, an interview, a cultural fit assessment.
Women remain less likely than men to be hired into entry-level roles, which leaves them underrepresented from the start. Think about that for a second. Even before anyone has a chance to prove themselves, demonstrate leadership potential, or show they can manage a team, the numbers are already skewed.
This early disadvantage creates what researchers call a "hollow middle"—there are simply fewer women in the pipeline to promote because fewer were hired in the first place. Starting at the manager level, there are significantly fewer women to promote from within and significantly fewer women at the right experience level to hire in from the outside.
The Subtle Science of Early Bias
The research on hiring bias is both fascinating and depressing. Studies consistently show that identical resumes receive different responses based solely on the name at the top. A "Jennifer" might need to work harder to be seen as competent compared to a "John," even with identical qualifications.
But the bias goes deeper than just names. It shows up in how we evaluate "leadership potential" in 23-year-olds (hint: we often conflate confidence with competence), how we assess "cultural fit" (which can be code for "people who remind us of ourselves"), and how we interpret ambition (assertive men vs. "bossy" women).
Women, especially women of color, receive less support from managers than men do and have less access to senior leaders than men do. This disparity in mentorship and sponsorship opportunities starts early and compounds over time, creating career trajectories that diverge from almost the beginning.
The Compound Effect of Small Decisions
Here's what's insidious about early hiring bias: it doesn't require any dramatic, lawsuit-worthy discrimination. It's the accumulation of hundreds of small decisions—who gets the benefit of the doubt, who gets invited to the informal coffee chat, who gets assigned to the high-visibility project, who gets introduced to the VP.
On a few critical fronts, managers provide less support to women than men, including providing the resources they need to succeed and helping them navigate organizational politics. These small gaps in support and access don't just affect individual careers—they create the statistical reality where, year after year, fewer women make it to that first management rung.
The math is actually quite straightforward: If companies continue to hire and promote women to manager at current rates, the number of women in management will increase by just 1 percentage point over the next 10 years. One. Percentage. Point.
Why This Matters for Everyone Entering the Workforce
If you're reading this and thinking "well, this is a women's problem," think again. This is a systemic problem that affects everyone. When talent allocation is inefficient—when the best candidates don't rise to leadership positions because of bias rather than ability—everyone loses.
Companies with more diverse leadership teams consistently outperform their peers financially. They make better decisions, they're more innovative, and they're better at understanding diverse customer bases. When we waste talent at the entry level, we're essentially lighting money on fire.
The enterN Difference: Rethinking Entry-Level Hiring
This is exactly why we're building enterN differently. Traditional hiring processes—the resume screening, the "cultural fit" interviews, the subjective "gut feelings"—are where bias lives and breathes. They're also where the 81:100 problem begins.
Our approach strips away the bias entry points. Instead of leading with names, schools, and demographic markers, we lead with skills, interests, and mutual compatibility. When a company swipes right on a candidate, they're responding to capabilities and potential, not unconscious associations.
We're also building in accountability. Companies that consistently show biased matching patterns get flagged. Candidates can see diversity data for companies they're considering. Transparency has a funny way of encouraging better behavior.
Small Changes, Big Impact
The 81:100 problem didn't happen overnight, and it won't be solved overnight. But it starts with acknowledging that the hiring process—those crucial first decisions about who gets in the door—is where the gap begins.
Every time we can eliminate one source of bias, make one hiring decision more equitable, or give one qualified candidate a fair shot, we're chipping away at that broken rung. The goal isn't to engineer outcomes, but to create truly fair processes where the best person wins—regardless of what their name is or what assumptions people make about them.
Because here's the thing: talent is equally distributed, but opportunity isn't. And until we fix how we identify and nurture talent from the very beginning, we'll keep seeing the same statistical gaps year after year.
The 81:100 problem is solvable. It just requires us to be honest about where it starts.
Want to work with employers who actually care about fairness?
Join the waitlist at: https://www.enter-n.com and be the first to access a hiring platform that eliminates tokenism, ghosting, and bias.
Want to read more on this topic? Check out these recommended articles:
McKinsey's Women in the Workplace report
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