973: INCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP: The “Ambition Gap” is Gaslighting Women. Again.

The Lean In and McKinsey & Company Women in the Workplace 2025 report claims that, for the first time, women are less likely than men to want a promotion, stating that 80% of women want to be promoted to the next level, compared to 86% of men. They label this development an “ambition gap”, stating that women are currently less ambitious than men. This label is wildly inaccurate, deeply offensive, and grossly irresponsible. Calling these findings an “ambition gap” is strategic reframing that places blame back on women, per usual, while letting broken systems (and the power players who uphold them) off the hook. When powerful institutions confuse correlation with causation and misdiagnose the problem like this, women pay the price. Again. These kinds of reports shape policy, leadership decisions, funding priorities, and how women are talked about at work. This label is not ok. It is harmful. The report assumes ambition is singular and linear, defined by traditional corporate ascent, and treats women’s slower advancement or disengagement as a personal failure instead of a rational response to inequitable systems and poor resource allocation. Most critically, the report ignores caregiving realities entirely. You cannot meaningfully analyze women’s ambition in 2025 without examining care infrastructures - or lack thereof. Choosing to ignore this is a distortion of reality. In other words, this is gaslighting. In this episode, I highlight other voices and data that were conveniently ignored. This counter data shows us what we already know - women are more ambitious than ever. Rather than seeking out a deeper understanding of the data, Lean In and McKinsey opted to report dirty diagnostics. What we know about data analysis is that to get to the real why, you have to dig deeper, think critically, and ask crucial questions of the actual people impacted. This didn’t happen with this reporting. When you actually talk to women, the situation is clear. We are no longer willing to self-abandon inside systems that refuse to evolve. We know that to get to the reported 80%, we were required to work exponentially harder with fewer resources. This is proof of our ambition, resilience, and talent, not lack thereof. The headline is not about an ambition gap. The headline is that women are growing, evolving, and working smarter while institutions largely are not. In reality, what we are seeing is an institutional gap, a patriarchal gap, and a systems gap. The bottom line is this… If we want to truly understand the evolution of women’s ambition, we need to start by examining the systems that punish it. Links Mentioned: Lean In and McKinsey & Company Women in the Workplace 2025: https://leanin.org/women-in-the-workplace Blessing Adesiyan on the Care Gap:https://thecaregap.substack.com/ More about Blessing Adesiyan: https://blessingadesiyan.com/ Chief and Harris Poll Data on Women’s Ambition: https://chief.com/articles/calling-bs-on-the-myth-of-womens-fading-ambition [Open Enrollment] Join Sara’s Aligned Leadership Incubator: saradean.com/aligned Hire Sara to speak: saradean.com/speaking Coach with Sara: https://saradean.com/executive-coaching-services Connect with Sara on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saradeanspeaks Watch Shameless Leadership episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@saradeanspeaks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices