FORTUNE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 95pandemic arrived just as women
were reaching new milestones in
the labor market. In January 2020
they made up more of the workforce
than men for the first time in over a
decade. At the very top of corporate
America, women were starting to
not just receive invitations to those
closed-door meetings but actually run
them. In June, when the most recent
Fortune 500 list was published, a
record 41 women led some of the big-
gest companies in the U.S. Let’s pause
to acknowledge this is still a depress-
ingly low number—but it is progress.
Ten years ago, there were only 12.
Given the urgency of the crisis
hitting women in other segments of
the working world, it’s understand-able that there hasn’t yet been much
attention paid to the pandemic’s
potential impact on women in the
C-suite. But whether the ranks of
female CEOs will continue to grow
in a post-COVID future has implica-
tions far beyond the corner office.
Women are graduating from college
at significantly higher rates than men
and are starting to get closer to parity
in the most competitive MBA pro-
grams. But the ratio flips inside U.S.
corporations, and the discrepancy
grows the closer you get to the top.
A recent report from McKinsey and
LeanIn.org found that women face a
“broken rung” at the step up to man-
ager. Last year, 89 white women and
85 women of color were promoted toNooyi says with a laugh.
No matter the industry or title
or level of seniority, the economic
disruption caused by COVID-19 will
leave a scar on working women in
ways that other downturns have not.
Blue-collar women lost their jobs
and have yet to fully regain them.
Working mothers whose livelihoods
were saved by telework dropped out
at higher rates than women with-
out children and men. Those who
remained did so at a cost. “Mothers
who stayed in the labor force had
great stress, anxiety, and frustration,”
says Claudia Goldin, a professor of
economics at Harvard. “They were
working under tremendous strain.”
It’s acutely wrenching that the