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Women in the Workplace 2025, the largest study of women in corporate America, reveals a troubling reversal: declining company commitment, stalled early advancement, new penalties tied to remote work—and, for the first time in a decade, a widening ambition gap between women and men. At a moment when Central Ohio’s economy is surging with historic investments in tech, healthcare, and manufacturing, the findings raise an urgent question: are women being left behind just as opportunity expands?
New research from McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org shows that only 80% of women now aspire to promotion, compared with 86% of men—a reversal of long-standing trends. Yet the data tells a more hopeful story as well: when women receive the same sponsorship, support, and clarity about advancement as their male peers, the ambition gap disappears entirely. The problem, it turns out, may not be women’s ambition—but workplaces that make ambition harder to sustain.
As we mark the 25th anniversary of The Women’s Fund of Central Ohio, join the Columbus Metropolitan Club for a timely conversation on what these findings mean for our region. Together, leaders will examine why so many women are stepping back from advancement, how the “broken rung” at the first step into management continues to block progress, and whether hybrid and remote work policies—designed to offer flexibility—are instead quietly reshaping career trajectories in harmful ways. We’ll spotlight effective strategies to strengthen sponsorship and create fairer pathways to leadership.
Featuring Michelle Bryant, Partner, McKinsey & Company; Dr. Pamela Gregory, Owner & CFO, National Center for Urban Solutions; Kelley Griesmer, President and CEO, The Women’s Fund of Central Ohio; Lillian Morales-Laster, Executive Director, Empowering Latinas Leadership Academy (ELLA), with moderator Margaret D. Finley, President, Central Ohio Belonging Consortium.
For an in-depth look at this research, please check out McKinsey & Company’s Women in the Workplace 2025 report.
If you would like to dive more deeply into this topic, our friends at the Columbus Metropolitan Library suggest checking out This Isn’t Working: How Working Women Can Overcome Stress, Guilt, and Overload to Find True Success, by Meghan French Dunbar, 2025.
Photographs by: Raymond L Thompson - Unchained Flicks
