Mckinsey Study Finds Women Are Less Ambitious Than Men, Then Found The Gap Disappears With Equal Support
(MENAFN- EIN Presswire)
SAN DIEGO, CA, UNITED STATES, October 12, 2026 /EINPresswire / -- For the first time in eleven years of tracking, McKinsey, and LeanIn reported an ambition gap between women and men in corporate America. Women were less interested in being promoted.
In the same report, the researchers noted that when women receive the same career support men do, the gap falls away.
Pamela Gardner has spent 23 years inside the life sciences industry and says those two sentences together are the most useful thing published on the subject this decade.
"Everybody quotes the first half," Gardner said. "The second half is the answer, and it is sitting right there in the same paragraph."
Gardner is founder and CEO of Biotech Vendor Services, the San Diego company she has run since 2003, building the events where life sciences companies meet their suppliers at research institutes and biopharma sites nationwide and also coaches mid-stage women in STEM on getting past the barrier this research describes.
The numbers Gardner points to:
The Women in the Workplace 2025 report, now in its eleventh year, drew on data from 124 organizations employing roughly three million people. It found women hold 29% of C-suite roles, unchanged from the previous year, and that women have been underrepresented at every level of the corporate pipeline for all eleven years of the study.
The figure Gardner returns to is smaller and less quoted. Thirty-one percent of entry-level women reported having a sponsor. Among men at the same level, it was 45%.
"A sponsor is the person who says your name in the room you are not in," Gardner said. "Not a mentor who gives you advice over coffee. Somebody with authority who spends their own credibility on you."
She said the gap explains more than the conversation usually allows.
"If two people join the same company on the same day and one of them has somebody advocating for her and the other does not, you will see a difference in five years that has nothing to do with either of them," she said.
Why she thinks confidence gets blamed
Gardner said the industry reaches for the internal explanation because it is the one it can act on quickly.
"Nobody arrives in biotech without confidence. You do not get through a PhD or run a clinical program without it," Gardner said. "What happens is that a woman spends eight years watching her ideas land better when a colleague repeats them, and eventually she stops offering them. Then we call that a confidence problem."
She said the response compounds it.
"We identify confidence as the problem and then we run confidence workshops," Gardner said. "The woman leaves feeling better for a fortnight and returns to the same meeting where the same thing happens."
McKinsey's own reporting points the same direction. The 2025 report described the broken rung, the gap in promotion rates from entry level to manager, as one of the most persistent structural barriers in the data and noted that for every 100 men promoted to manager, 93 women were.
She is not arguing the inner work is optional
Gardner said she spends most of her working life on exactly that.
"Both things are true. There is real work to do on how a woman shows up, and there is a real structure deciding what she is handed," she said. "The mistake is treating the second one as if it were the first."
She runs The Art of Women Thriving in STEM, a program built around three shifts she describes as being free to be yourself, stopping the spinning plates, and being happy now. Her TEDx talk, Dress Bold, Be Bold, argues that blending in is the surest route to being overlooked.
"The women I work with are exhausted, and most of them have concluded the answer is to work harder and take up less space," Gardner said. "They are holding so many plates in the air that they are frightened of what happens if they let one go."
What she tells companies to measure
Gardner said the sponsorship figure is the one she would put in front of a leadership team along with supporting self-development.
"Do not ask how your women feel. Ask how many of them have somebody senior advocating for them by name, and then compare it to the men," she said. "That number is knowable, it is fixable."
Gardner received the 2019 Athena Pinnacle Award and a 2021 San Diego Business Journal Business Women of the Year award and was recognized in 2021 as one of the San Diego Business Journal's 500 Most Influential People in the Health and Science category.
For more information visit:
itstimetogetvisible/pam-gardner
In the same report, the researchers noted that when women receive the same career support men do, the gap falls away.
Pamela Gardner has spent 23 years inside the life sciences industry and says those two sentences together are the most useful thing published on the subject this decade.
"Everybody quotes the first half," Gardner said. "The second half is the answer, and it is sitting right there in the same paragraph."
Gardner is founder and CEO of Biotech Vendor Services, the San Diego company she has run since 2003, building the events where life sciences companies meet their suppliers at research institutes and biopharma sites nationwide and also coaches mid-stage women in STEM on getting past the barrier this research describes.
The numbers Gardner points to:
The Women in the Workplace 2025 report, now in its eleventh year, drew on data from 124 organizations employing roughly three million people. It found women hold 29% of C-suite roles, unchanged from the previous year, and that women have been underrepresented at every level of the corporate pipeline for all eleven years of the study.
The figure Gardner returns to is smaller and less quoted. Thirty-one percent of entry-level women reported having a sponsor. Among men at the same level, it was 45%.
"A sponsor is the person who says your name in the room you are not in," Gardner said. "Not a mentor who gives you advice over coffee. Somebody with authority who spends their own credibility on you."
She said the gap explains more than the conversation usually allows.
"If two people join the same company on the same day and one of them has somebody advocating for her and the other does not, you will see a difference in five years that has nothing to do with either of them," she said.
Why she thinks confidence gets blamed
Gardner said the industry reaches for the internal explanation because it is the one it can act on quickly.
"Nobody arrives in biotech without confidence. You do not get through a PhD or run a clinical program without it," Gardner said. "What happens is that a woman spends eight years watching her ideas land better when a colleague repeats them, and eventually she stops offering them. Then we call that a confidence problem."
She said the response compounds it.
"We identify confidence as the problem and then we run confidence workshops," Gardner said. "The woman leaves feeling better for a fortnight and returns to the same meeting where the same thing happens."
McKinsey's own reporting points the same direction. The 2025 report described the broken rung, the gap in promotion rates from entry level to manager, as one of the most persistent structural barriers in the data and noted that for every 100 men promoted to manager, 93 women were.
She is not arguing the inner work is optional
Gardner said she spends most of her working life on exactly that.
"Both things are true. There is real work to do on how a woman shows up, and there is a real structure deciding what she is handed," she said. "The mistake is treating the second one as if it were the first."
She runs The Art of Women Thriving in STEM, a program built around three shifts she describes as being free to be yourself, stopping the spinning plates, and being happy now. Her TEDx talk, Dress Bold, Be Bold, argues that blending in is the surest route to being overlooked.
"The women I work with are exhausted, and most of them have concluded the answer is to work harder and take up less space," Gardner said. "They are holding so many plates in the air that they are frightened of what happens if they let one go."
What she tells companies to measure
Gardner said the sponsorship figure is the one she would put in front of a leadership team along with supporting self-development.
"Do not ask how your women feel. Ask how many of them have somebody senior advocating for them by name, and then compare it to the men," she said. "That number is knowable, it is fixable."
Gardner received the 2019 Athena Pinnacle Award and a 2021 San Diego Business Journal Business Women of the Year award and was recognized in 2021 as one of the San Diego Business Journal's 500 Most Influential People in the Health and Science category.
For more information visit:
itstimetogetvisible/pam-gardner
Pamela Gardner
Its Time To Get Visible
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