Women Matter

Achieving the promise of women executives

In 2007, McKinsey & Company published Women Matter:  Gender diversity, a corporate performance driver.  This report demonstrated a link between a company's performance and the proportion of women serving in its governing body.  In Women Matter 2, published in 2008, we identified the reasons for this performance effect by examining the leadership styles that women leaders typically adopt.  In 2009, we conducted a survey with worldwide business leaders which confirmed that certain leadership behaviors typically adopted by women are critical to perform well in the post-crisis world.  Women Matter 2010 provides focused analysis on how to achieve gender diversity at top management levels. 

Our newest report, Women Matter 2012: Making the Breakthrough, presents our recent work to benchmark the gender diversity programs of 235 European companies, the majority of them among the Continent's largest, and presents the path forward.

Many companies are making serious efforts to improve the number of women in top jobs. This report looks at what companies can do to make a breakthrough.

Read the report (PDF - 479 KB)