Visit to explore McKinsey’s client service, research, and insights on DEI. We will soon launch an early career program and expand our capability-building offering designed to support all leaders in creating inclusive organizations. Our Connected Leaders Academy has enrolled 40,000 leaders. McKinsey offers award-winning programs to equip leaders with the network, capabilities, and mindsets needed to achieve their goals. We have a track record of client service to institutions working to modernize their talent and business processes as well as cultures to support these aims. McKinsey & Company has made a commitment to researching and building diverse leadership, as well as inclusive and equitable work environments. They’re watching senior women leave for better opportunities, and they’re prepared to do the same.

Young women are even more ambitious, and they place a higher premium on working in an equitable, supportive, and inclusive workplace. If companies don’t take action, they won’t just lose their women leaders they risk losing the next generation of women leaders, too. And finally, it’s increasingly important to women leaders that they work for companies that prioritize flexibility, employee well-being, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. They’re doing more to support employee well-being and foster inclusion, but this critical work is spreading them thin and going mostly unrewarded. They’re more likely to experience belittling microaggressions, such as having their judgment questioned or being mistaken for someone more junior. Women leaders are just as ambitious as men, but at many companies they face headwinds that make it harder to advance. The reasons women leaders are stepping away from their companies are telling.

And all of these dynamics are even more pronounced for women of color. Now, companies are struggling to hold on to the relatively few women leaders they have. For years, fewer women have risen through the ranks because of the “broken rung” at the first step up to manager. Women are already significantly underrepresented in leadership. This could have serious implications for companies. Women leaders are switching jobs at the highest rate we’ve ever seen-and at a higher rate than men in leadership. Women are demanding more from work, and they’re leaving their companies in unprecedented numbers to get it. There are always winners and losers in the war for talent, and the stakes are higher than ever for companies that want to achieve gender equality.

The woman between us