Two major reports on gender and work dropped this week. Read separately, they tell familiar stories, but read together, they reveal something harder to ignore.
The first is the 11th annual Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey and LeanIn.Org, released December 9th. It tracks women’s advancement in corporate America including pipeline representation, promotion rates, sponsorship, and corporate commitments. The headlines have been appropriately alarmed: companies are rolling back their commitment to women’s advancement. For the first time in the study’s history, women report less interest in being promoted than men and progress is stalling or reversing.
The second is the World Inequality Report 2026 (which has barely been reported on in the US), released December 10th by the World Inequality Lab. It measures something entirely different: global income and wealth distribution, including a chapter on gender that accounts for unpaid domestic and care labor, which is the work that most economic analyses don’t count as work at all.
These reports are looking at different populations, geographies, and definitions of “work.” One focuses on who gets ahead inside corporate America. The other is about who gets paid at all for the labor that keeps economies running.
They arrive at the same conclusion: women’s labor is structurally undervalued. That convergence is the signal worth paying attention to.
What the Numbers Say
The McKinsey/LeanIn findings on US corporate America:
- Only half of companies now say women’s career advancement is a high priority, down sharply from its peak earlier in the decade
- For the first time, women, particularly at the entry-level, report lower interest in promotion than men
- When women receive the same career support as men, the ambition gap disappears entirely
- Employees with sponsors are promoted at nearly twice the rate of those without, but entry-level women are far less likely to have sponsors
- Women who work remotely are promoted at lower rates than men with the same arrangement
The World Inequality Report findings on the global picture:
- Women work more hours than men globally (53 hours per week on average compared to 43 for men) when domestic and care labor is included
- Excluding unpaid work, women earn 61% of what men earn per hour
- When unpaid labor is included, women earn just 32% of what men earn per working hour
- Women capture only 26% of global labor income, which is a figure that has barely shifted since 1990
- The report names this directly: “economies that undervalue half of their population’s labor undermine their own capacity for growth and resilience”
Different Lenses, Same Structure
These reports are measuring quite different populations, yet finding the same pattern.
The McKinsey report focuses on what happens after women enter the paid corporate workforce. It tracks who gets promoted, who gets sponsored, and who gets the stretch assignment. It’s a report about mobility within a specific system.
The World Inequality Report sees the layer underneath. It counts the 10 extra hours per week women spend on domestic and care labor, which doesn’t show up in GDP calculations, come with benefits, or build toward a retirement fund. It’s a report about how we define “work” in the first place.
When you zoom out to the global view and see that women’s share of labor income hasn’t meaningfully changed in thirty-five years, the US corporate “rollback” stops looking like a temporary setback and instead looks more like a local expression of a much deeper pattern.
The companies pulling back on women’s advancement aren’t aberrations. They’re reverting to a default. The default is a global economic structure that has never fully valued women’s labor, not in the boardroom, and certainly not in the home.
What This Signals for the Future
If you’re trying to anticipate where work is heading, these two reports together suggest some uncomfortable forecasts. These forecasts are critical to understand and pay attention to, so that we can change our trajectory and make a better, fairer future.
Signal 1: “Women’s advancement” efforts have been operating at the wrong altitude.
The McKinsey report offers solid recommendations: fix sponsorship, equip managers, and build inclusive cultures. These matter, but they’re interventions at the organizational layer, attempting to correct for inequities that originate at the economic layer. If thirty-five years of progress hasn’t moved women’s share of global labor income, we should be honest that pipeline programs and ERGs, however well-designed, aren’t going to fully close a gap this deep.
This doesn’t mean stop doing the work. It means recognize what this work can and cannot accomplish.
Signal 2: The “ambition gap” is a rational response to a rigged game.
When the McKinsey data shows that women’s interest in promotion rebounds to match men’s the moment they receive equal support, it tells us something important: women aren’t opting out because they lack drive. They’re just reading the room correctly.
If your labor is going to be undervalued whether you lean in or not, then moderating your ambition isn’t a confidence problem. It’s a reasonable response to structural conditions.
Organizations that frame this as “women need to be more ambitious” are going to keep losing talent to organizations that frame it as “we need to be worth being ambitious for.”
This doesn’t mean men aren’t also under strain in today’s economy. It means gender inequity is one of the clearest signals of how value is distorted across the system, revealing pressures that ultimately affect everyone, even if they show up differently.
Signal 3: The care economy is the missing variable.
The World Inequality Report’s most important move is including unpaid domestic labor in its analysis. When you do that, the picture shifts dramatically: women aren’t earning 61 cents on the dollar, they’re earning 32 cents. Women aren’t working fewer hours, they’re working ten hours more per week.
This has direct implications for corporate gender equity efforts. Every workplace policy, including remote work, flexibility, parental leave, and sponsorship, intersects with the unequal distribution of care labor at home. Companies can’t fully address gender inequity in the office while ignoring the structural load women carry outside of it.
Signal 4: This is an economic efficiency problem, not just a fairness problem.
The World Inequality Report frames gender inequality as “structural inefficiency”. Economies undervaluing half their population’s labor undermines capacity for growth and resilience, which is an economic argument, not a moral one.
Organizations that figure out how to actually value women’s labor, not just say they do, will have access to a larger talent pool, lower attrition, and more sustainable leadership pipelines. Organizations that revert to default will face the consequences of operating with half their potential.
The Fork in the Road
These two reports, read together, suggest we’re at a decision point.
One path is to treat the US corporate rollback as a temporary setback and wait for the pendulum to swing back. Keep running sponsorship programs and hope the numbers improve.
The other path is to recognize that women’s share of labor income hasn’t moved significantly in the U.S., or much at all globally. The interventions we’ve been making are necessary but insufficient. The structure itself needs to change and that requires looking beyond corporate pipelines to the economic systems that shape how all work is valued.
That’s a harder conversation. It involves policy, not just programs. It involves care infrastructure, not just career development. It involves asking who the economy is built for and whether we’re willing to rebuild it. But it’s the conversation the data is pointing us toward.