For every 100 men promoted to manager, only 81 women make that same move. And the women who miss that first step are significantly less likely to reach senior leadership — not because of their performance, but because trajectory momentum is a real and measurable force. This is not a pipeline problem. The pipeline is being filtered, and it is happening right at the manager level, the very first rung of formal leadership. In this episode I sit down with a researcher to go beyond the headline of the McKinsey Women in the Workplace report and into what the broken rung actually looks like inside a performance review, a succession planning conversation, a Tuesday morning meeting where your name either gets said or it does not. We talk about what companies that are genuinely moving the needle are doing differently — not DEI theater, structural change — and then we get to the part that matters most: what you do with this information right now as an individual woman navigating this system. The data is not here to defeat you. It is here to make you dangerous, and this episode is going to show you exactly how to use it.

If you are ready to stop being filtered out by systems you didn't build and start positioning yourself to move anyway — the Soul Code is where we do that work. Join us at mofaul.com/SoulCode.