According to McKinsey and Lean In reports, women at the top are tired and burned out

• Senior women say they get burned over and over again.

• Burnout levels among these women are the highest they’ve been in the past five years, according to a report by McKinsey and LeanIn.org.

• The report also found that women want promotions less often than men – unless they receive the same support.

Women are hitting the top of the corporate ladder only to find something waiting for them: exhaustion.

According to a report published Tuesday by McKinsey and LeanIn.org, a nonprofit founded by Sheryl Sandberg, burnout among senior-level women is the highest it has been in the past five years.

About 60% of these women said they felt burned out at work frequently in the past few months, compared to 50% of senior-level men, per the “Women in the Workplace” 2025 study.

Women who are new to leadership roles feel the stress more acutely. Among senior-level women who had been with their company for five years or less, 70% reported frequent burnout, and 81% said they were concerned about their job security.

“These high levels of anxiety are consistent with research that shows that when women are new to organizations and have to work harder to prove themselves,” Black women in leadership face disproportionately high burnout and job insecurity. “In contrast, when women and men have longer tenures in leadership, their levels of burnout and job security are very similar.”

The report, an annual study of women in corporate America, surveyed 9,500 employees at 124 companies between July and August. The study also includes interviews with 62 HR executives and company-reported data from 124 organizations that together employ 3 million people.

LeanIn.org commissioned a study with McKinsey in 2015 to track how women progress in the corporate pipeline and where companies are lagging. The group is named after Sandberg’s 2013 book “Lean In,” which sparked a national debate about women’s ambition, leadership and workplace equality.

This year’s results paint a bleak picture for women at the top. Senior-level women who are hesitant to advance their careers say they see a way forward compared to their male counterparts. Eleven percent of senior women who don’t want to be promoted say they don’t see a realistic path to promotion, compared to 3 percent of senior men. And 21% say many senior-level people seem burned out or unhappy, nearly twice as many men who say the same.

It’s not because women are less committed — the report found that women and men are equally disengaged. Willingness to continue climbing varies, according to the report.

The data shows a clear ambition gap: 80% of women want to be promoted to the next level, compared to 86% of men. That gap is widest at the beginning and at the top of the pipeline—69% vs. 80% at the entry level, and 84% vs. 92% among senior leaders.

It was the first time in the report’s 11-year history that women showed less interest in promotion than men, it said.

This gap in advancement ambition closes “when women receive the same career support as men,” the report added. In other words, companies are responsible for creating burnout problems for women.

“This is only happening at companies that don’t do the right thing for women to have full support and equal opportunities for advancement,” Sandberg said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Tuesday.

“What’s happening is that women face a lot of barriers at every level of their careers,” she added.

Many companies are cutting back on DEI and support for women

While companies say they are committed to diversity and inclusion, at least one in six have cut teams or resources behind those efforts, the report said.

About 13% of employers have scaled back or eliminated women-focused career-development programs, and another 13% have cut formal sponsorship programs, which play an important role in helping employees advance, it added.

“Overall, women are less likely to have sponsors — and that’s really important. Employees who don’t have sponsors are promoted at nearly twice the rate,” the report said.

The report also found that companies are scaling back remote and flexible work options, which can hinder women’s ability to stay and advance in their careers. One in four have scaled back remote or hybrid work arrangements, and 13% have reduced flexible working hours in the past year.

At the same time, the report said that women who work remotely most of the time are “less likely to be sponsored and much less likely to have been promoted in the last two years than women who work most on-site.” Meanwhile, men receive the same level of sponsorship and promotions regardless of their work arrangements.

At the entry level, a stage where advocacy and visibility are essential, women are also less likely than men to receive stretch assignments and other opportunities, the report added.

Last year, a study by “Women in the Workplace” found that more women are advancing into senior leadership roles. By 2024, women will hold 29% of C-suite roles, up from 17% in 2015.

However, according to the report, progress pales at entry and management levels. “For every 100 men promoted to manager in 2018, 79 women were promoted. And this year, only 81 are women,” it added.

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