Twelve years after Sheryl Sandberg’s best-seller Lean In sparked a office motion urging girls to push for development, many are actually leaning out. A brand new survey by LeanIn.org, the nonprofit Sandberg based alongside the e book’s launch in 2013, carried out with McKinsey & Firm reveals a notable drop in girls’s ambition.
LeanIn.org’s annual “Ladies within the Office” report, launched Tuesday (Dec. 9) and based mostly on information from 124 firms within the U.S. and Canada, finds for the primary time that ladies are much less doubtless than males to say they need a promotion. In 2025, 80 p.c of girls sought a promotion in comparison with 86 p.c of males. In prior years, ambition ranges had been aligned. Final 12 months, for instance, each had been at 70 p.c.
“We do see that ambition hole, however solely when girls don’t get the alternatives and help they want,” Sandberg mentioned in an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday.
She mentioned the hole stems from persistent obstacles at each profession stage. Two in 10 firms now say girls’s development is a low or nonexistent precedence—a determine that rises to a few in 10 for girls of colour. About half of the businesses that beforehand contributed to the report additionally not prioritize advancing girls, Sandberg mentioned.
Day-to-day, these obstacles are mirrored in how ambition is perceived and rewarded. Ladies are 30 p.c extra doubtless than males to be labeled “aggressive” once they ask for raises or promotions, and males in senior roles are 70 p.c extra doubtless than their feminine friends to be chosen for management coaching.
Sandberg argues the answer is easy: “Standardize your processes. Set up standards upfront that everybody agrees to which can be universally utilized.”
The report additionally notes the influence of post-COVID return-to-office mandates. 1 / 4 of surveyed firms now supply fewer distant and hybrid choices—insurance policies that disproportionately have an effect on girls, who make up about two-thirds of U.S. caregivers. Ladies who work largely remotely face stigma for utilizing flexibility advantages, whereas males usually don’t.
Gender range packages are additionally shrinking. Almost one-sixth of firms have decreased formal management sponsorships and scaled again packages designed for girls. These cuts come amid the Trump administration’s rollback of DEI efforts and the rise of natalist insurance policies that encourage girls to have extra youngsters.
As rhetoric selling stay-at-home motherhood positive aspects traction, Sandberg mentioned the information doesn’t help the concept staying house is inherently higher for households. These expectations, she added, “had been by no means actually gone.” Even now, she mentioned, “Do I actually assume we ever totally inspired management in…girls as a lot as males?” The reply is not any.
“When you can afford to be a full-time partner and a full-time father or mother as a person or a girl and also you wish to try this, I feel that may be deeply fulfilling work,” mentioned Sandberg. “Most ladies don’t have that choice.”
In the end, Sandberg mentioned increasing management alternatives for girls is an financial crucial. “It’s a query of financial productiveness,” she mentioned. “Will we wish to get the very best out of our workforce?”
