Why boardrooms are still a boys' club—despite half our workforce being women
Male and female staff of an organisation.
What you need to know:
- Women enter Kenya’s workforce in strong numbers but vanish at the top; McKinsey calls for urgent reform.
- Women face structural barriers to leadership; real progress requires strategy, accountability, and cultural transformation.
Why is gender diversity important in the workplace? According to the Mckinsey and Company report, Women in the Workplace 2025: India, Nigeria and Kenya, women’s “underrepresentation not only undermines their economic power and mobility but also impedes countries’ inclusive growth”, considering that “[they] constitute half of the global working-age population”.
This is Mckinsey’s first report on this theme outside the US and Canada. Although it primarily focuses on the private sector, the report also examines the public workplace in Kenya.
Looking at the talent pipeline, the study established that in all the three countries, “women face distinct challenges in entering the workforce and progressing to leadership roles”, thus occupying less than 30 per cent of C-suite (executive manager level) positions.
Specifically, in Kenya, “women hold 46 per cent of entry-level roles in the public sector and 40 per cent in the private sector, but C-suite representation declines to 27 per cent”. On the other hand, their representation steadily declines from 41 per cent at entry level in the private sector to 27 per cent at C-suite and then 24 per cent at board levels.
There is also divergence in women’s representation across sectors. Under the financial services sector, all three countries presented “relatively high representation of women at entry levels but significant drop-offs at senior leadership levels”. In Kenya, they commanded 50 per cent at entry level, but only 26 per cent at senior rungs.
In healthcare, they constituted 55 per cent at entry but declined to 39 per cent at C-suite levels. In the legal sector, women held 59 per cent of positions at entry, dropping to 55 per cent at C-suite levels. The report calls this trend “a classic declining funnel” or what Sara Longwe calls the gender fade-away –a systematic loss of gender equality gains the higher one moves.
On a positive note, the report shows parity in the promotion rates for women and men in the private and public sectors in Kenya. In the latter, women’s and men’s attrition rates are also noted to be on a par. In fact, Kenya’s public sector emerges as a beacon of hope where “women maintain stable representation at both entry and managerial levels.” This is attributed to “standardised schemes of service, which define clear career progression paths” and retention of women due to their sense of job security and satisfaction that they are influencing policymaking.
Perhaps the private sector can benchmark with the public sector on these variables for lessons and strategies it can adopt and replicate.
On the negative side, several constraints to women’s inclusion and retention in Kenya are highlighted. They include sociocultural challenges and the dynamics of personal life and caregiving, such as starting a family while navigating career advancement. One woman explained, for example, that she was constrained by a combination of societal norms on “what women were expected to achieve”, dearth of female role models and low self-esteem.
Others were “pressure to put in extra effort to develop the necessary skills for senior roles”; reluctance to separate with family and work in certain geographical locations; historical domination of senior roles by men; and lack of opportunities for personal career growth. It also notes a higher attrition of women from senior positions, observing that women are “1.3 times more likely than men to exit management positions”.
A nuanced interpretation of the findings shows the existence of lip service to gender diversity. Basically, there is wide acceptance of the principle as a strategic priority and widespread development of organisational policies towards the same. However, boards are still male-dominated and are not fully accountable for driving the desired outcomes. This contradicts the policy frameworks and stunts practice.
A key takeaway is that gender balance at all levels of the workforce is achievable but must be driven by deliberate policy and practices. It is on these bases that the report recommends three anchors for change. Under diagnosis, it proposes identification of specific gender diversity challenges in the talent pipeline to inform development of targeted improvement strategies. This is followed by design, under which it recommends assessment of the presence, use and implementation of policies, especially those on sponsorship and mentorship, flexible work and family care. Third is monitoring – enhancing tracking and accountability mechanisms for effective policy implementation.
Read: Timeline: The rise and fall of women's representation in Kenya’s political leadership since 2022
More specific action points include regular review of gender diversity metrics and policy implementation, collection and analysis of data on the pipeline and cultivation of organisational understanding of gender diversity as a top priority. The study also recommends further research in the causal relationship between gender diversity and higher levels of corporate financial performance.
Both the public and private sectors will find this report useful as a mirror of their status as well as a shopping basket of strategies to improve performance. Scholars of gender, diversity and organisational development will also find it informative.
The writer is a lecturer in Gender and Development Studies at South Eastern Kenya ([email protected]).
