New 2025 data: women want the promotion as much as men do, once they get the same support
Eighty percent of women say they would like to move up to a higher role. When the same question goes to men, eighty-six percent say yes. As the 2025 Women in the Workplace report by McKinsey and LeanIn shows, that six-point distance disappears entirely once women get the same backing that men already enjoy.
If you work in Greater Hartford, where insurance, finance and healthcare employers such as The Hartford, Aetna and Hartford HealthCare set the pace for the region's careers, this should settle a very old debate. For years, the explanation for why women thin out above director level was that they wanted it less. They opt out. They put family first. Women are often labeled "less ambitious," a description that surfaces in more talent discussions than anyone would openly confess. The data suggests the ambition is present at nearly the same rate. The remaining gap is not a personality trait. It is a response to what women are given.
Origin of the statistic
Since 2015, McKinsey and LeanIn have produced Women in the Workplace, a yearly survey of American companies and the people who work inside them. Its 2025 round polls women and men on whether they seek advancement, and then looks at the other traits shared by those who say they do. Six points is the difference that draws readers in most immediately. The finding beneath it is that among employees who report equal support from their manager, including sponsorship and encouragement, the gap disappears. This is a survey rather than an experiment, so it cannot prove that support causes ambition. What it does show is that the two travel together, and that "women want it less" falls apart when women receive what men receive. Also in that research, 31 percent of women at the entry level report having a sponsor, while the share for men is 45 percent. What's absent is the sponsorship, and its absence starts right at the beginning of a career.
Here is how it plays out in a meeting room.
Picture yourself in a talent review in Hartford. Picture yourself as a vice president in Hartford, reviewing a shortlist of three candidates for an open senior vice president post, two of whom are men. A colleague remarks that the woman on the list "hasn't really raised her hand," and you happen to know her well. In two separate one-on-one meetings she did speak up, yet her manager simply nodded and carried on without taking it further. None of the men on that shortlist ever had to speak up on their own behalf. Backers in Greater Hartford had lifted them up in gatherings much like this one. The ambition is the same. The amplification is not. Before the discussion wraps up, a question mark has been placed next to her name, and the doubt attaches to her rather than to the manager who failed to pass her request up the chain.
How this applies to your path forward
If you have ever been told you need to "want it more," you received the wrong diagnosis, most likely from someone whose own wanting was never questioned. The factor that would close this gap is not something you can manufacture from within yourself. It is a manager who says your name when you are not in the room, a sponsor who puts you on the slate, and encouragement that arrives before you have to ask. Either the organization puts these supports in place, or it leaves them out. You are free to hunt for them on your own, but recognize that you are working around a missing ingredient, not fixing something wrong with you.
Action items
State your aspirations plainly so they cannot be easily missed. Send your manager a written note saying you would like to be considered for the next director-level position that opens. Ask what you would need to demonstrate for them to put your name forward, and then request that one senior leader outside your reporting chain agree to serve as a reference when the shortlist is assembled. Through your own effort, you have assembled the backing that men tend to receive automatically. Hartford's women's networks, from WAVES in Glastonbury to the eWomenNetwork Greater Hartford group, are a good place to find that senior person.
Within your company, who speaks your name when you are not in the room?