I applaud the idea behind McKinsey & Company’s new special report, Unlocking the full potential of women in the U.S. economy, which hits on a number of important issues including why more women are not getting into higher management positions; how choices about the quality of the work/life balance affect both men and women; and what structural, lifestyle, and other factors may be holding women back in their careers. I appreciated moving beyond the discussion of the “mommy factor,” or the idea that once a woman has children she is penalized in her career in various ways (lack of promotions, lower pay, trouble explaining long periods of absence from the workforce, etc.). Pushing the boundaries of the discussion really upped the report’s interest factor.

Women today have been told that we’re allowed to ask for it all: the education, the career, the marriage, the family, the nice house. However, acknowledgment of the factors actually holding women back from this ideal is often overlooked. Women make up more than half of college students, as the report points out, but still make up a minuscule percentage of upper management. The report is focused on where women might get lost along the way, and does so with explanations that might be obvious if only they were better known, such as the lack of female mentors in high-powered careers. Reading this, my first thought was “well, duh,” however, I had to ask myself how many times I’d actually thought about this before. The interviews conducted for this report do the important job of publicizing the feelings of women currently in the workforce.

It was fascinating to me to see that 50% of men with one child say they wouldn’t accept a new job that reduced their work/life balance. I think the picture we often hold in our head is that of the man going out to earn the living, missing seeing his kids grow, and always positioning himself to climb higher on the corporate ladder. This statistic says something about how men view their current roles, and I think the authors of the report put it best by saying, “companies have even more to lose from the talent pipeline than highly-qualified mothers.”  Women and men both struggle with how to provide for their families and still see their families.

The closing argument is a thoughtful and compelling point. It ties the implementation of gender diversity in the top levels of management to the ability to sustain or grow the standard of living in the U.S. This is a point that should capture the attention of those concerned about the current state of the U.S. economy, which is probably most of us. This argument is also a current political hot potato. No one wants to suggest that jobs and living standards don’t matter.

These compliments aside, I’m not going to let the report off that easy. The big weakness comes at the end. After outlining various convincing reasons that women are held back, the report’s “path to solutions” left me cold. The first suggestion, to “start with a compelling story for change,” honestly had me questioning what the heck that even means. Are they talking about starting with an anecdote about a single woman who should advance in a company? A few women? An organization that is making the promotion of women a priority? I agree with the report that organizational change is required, but I fail to see how a single story might bring about this shift. That kinda seems like expecting Al Gore to go ahead and just solve climate change by himself. Sure, he can present a story that will capture people’s attention, but that doesn’t mean that An Inconvenient Truth actually solved the problem of climate change, unless I completely missed a very important memo.
 
Of course, in any report suggesting solutions is the most difficult part of the process. Pointing out flaws and issues is pretty easy, especially in retrospect. Everyone’s a Monday-morning quarterback (sports idiom for the win!). That said, it’s just as important to think critically about real solutions in order to avoid making the same dumb plays. The issue of the expectations men and women should have in the workplace is vitally important. I hope that future reports of this kind will take their solutions a step farther in order to optimize the good this type of work can do.

You can read the executive summary of the report here.

-Melissa E. Thompson (guest blogger, who you can follow here)