Free new database gives women X-ray vision into whether every major U.S. company promotes women equally — rankings from real workforce numbers.
ATLANTA, Oct. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Every working woman has asked herself the same quiet question: do women actually get ahead here? Until now, the only way to answer it was to take the job and wait years to find out. Now the answer takes about thirty seconds. Type nearly any major U.S. employer’s name into a free public site recently launched by data scientists and funded by the Women Leaders Association, and see its Glass Ceiling Score: a simple measure of whether women there rise into management and executive jobs at the same rate as men, calculated from the company’s actual workforce numbers — not its recruiting brochure.
Think of it as a Glassdoor for promotions. Before accepting an offer, before asking for a raise or a bigger role, before believing a Careers page that promises “women thrive here,” a woman can check what the numbers say — about the company courting her, and about the one she works for now. Women earn roughly 15 percent less than men on average, Pew Research estimates, and that gap usually starts with who gets picked for management. Pay gets measured constantly; promotion almost never — until now.
Two scores, built from the numbers companies cannot massage
By analyzing each employer’s workforce counts by gender and job title, the team developed two metrics:
- The Glass Ceiling Score measures whether women advance into executive roles at the same rate as men.
- The Management Entry Score measures whether women reach first-level management at comparable rates — the rung where research shows most careers stall.
Anyone can look up a company at no cost and see both scores, compare employers within an industry, and drill down by metro area and state, where the tool ranks the major employers in each market and highlights the top performers.
“Women have been told for fifty years to try harder, negotiate harder, and find a mentor. The missing piece was never effort — it was information,” said Lydia Price, 2026-2027 Volunteer Chair of the Women Leaders Association. “When a woman can compare how her employer advances women on average in comparison to men on average it changes the entire frame of reference, the conversation changes from trust us to show me.” The companies that excel in promoting women equally into management also receive Top Women’s Workplace awards at the chapter and national levels.
Who the data serves
Women entering the workforce or considering offers can identify employers with strong advancement records. Current employees can benchmark their own company and bring data to promotion and career-development conversations. Consumers and investors can direct support toward companies with fair practices, and corporate leaders can see — often for the first time — how their promotion patterns compare with competitors’.
Building on a decade of gender-equality research
The Glass Ceiling Score stands on the shoulders of a decade of important, groundbreaking work. The Economist’s influential Glass Ceiling Index (https://www.economist.com/interactive/graphic-detail/glass-ceiling-index) has put the issue on the global agenda by ranking conditions for working women annually — though at the country level, not by employer. The Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index (https://www.bloomberg.com/company/press/bloomberg-2023-gei/) helped set early standards for corporate transparency, tracking several hundred public companies that self-reported through voluntary disclosure. Forbes’ widely read Best Employers for Women list (https://www.forbes.com/lists/top-companies-women/) surveys employees at a few hundred large firms each year, and The Times and Business in the Community’s respected Top 50 Employers for Gender recognizes UK organizations that apply for consideration.
The Glass Ceiling Score builds from that and goes further on every dimension: it covers far more companies, publishes an individual score by company rather than a limited list of a few hundred, offers location-level drill-downs, and rests on unambiguous workforce statistics rather than surveys, self-disclosure, or applications. And because every score is computed directly from actual workforce data without remuneration, sponsorships, payments, and public relations cannot influence a company’s result — and no employer can opt out of being measured.
“Earlier indexes did pioneering work, but each could only cover the companies that participated or made a short list. We measured everyone,” Price said. “If an employer promotes women fairly, the data will celebrate it. If it doesn’t, the data will say that too — and for the first time, a woman gets to see it before she signs the offer letter.”
What comes next
The initial release covers most major U.S. employers, with expansion planned across Europe and Asia. Future versions will add deeper demographic analysis, including promotion-fairness scoring for women of color and other underrepresented groups. The project was funded by the Women Leaders and organizers expect additional women’s foundations and equal-pay philanthropists to support the effort, with the goal of keeping the platform permanently free to women worldwide.
The tool is available now at https://WomanLeaders.org/r/GlassCeiling
About the Women Leaders Association
The Women Leaders Association is a non-profit committed to the development and advancement of women in the corporate arena, with chapters in most major U.S. cities. The tool includes analysis by key metros and states, with rankings of the major employers in each, including Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Denver, Washington, Dallas, Houston, San Diego, Los Angeles, Seattle, Charlotte, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Nashville, Detroit, San Antonio, Cincinnati, Omaha, St. Louis, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, Grand Rapids, Phoenix, Portland, Miami, Austin, Baltimore, Tampa, Orlando, Hartford, Raleigh, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Norfolk, Richmond, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Greensboro, Memphis, Oklahoma City, Columbus, Tulsa, Sacramento, Jacksonville, Birmingham, Albuquerque, Rochester, Boise, Knoxville, New Orleans, Buffalo, Baton Rouge, Charleston, Spokane, El Paso, Chattanooga, Little Rock, Greenville, Providence, Springfield, Honolulu, Madison, Columbia, Tucson, Stockton, Des Moines, Syracuse, Harrisburg, Jackson, Bakersfield, Akron, Wichita, and Augusta, plus most states including California, Texas, Florida, and New York.
Media Contact:
Lydia Price
2026-2027 Volunteer Chair, Women Leaders Association
Lydia@WomanLeaders.org 678-427-6771
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SOURCE Women Leaders Association
