Latest / Women at Work: Career, Leadership & Modern Work / How the Delegation Gap Hurts Women Leaders
Transcript
- Lucas: A few years ago I was sitting in a budget review meeting, and I watched a department head assign two major initiatives. One was a new client pitch with a lot of visibility. The other was a cross-team process overhaul, essential but invisible. The pitch went to a male director. The overhaul went to the woman who had been acting head of the department for six months. Luna: And I bet nobody thought twice about it. That's the delegation gap in action. Lucas: Exactly. The delegation gap is this subtle pattern where women leaders get assigned more operational, maintenance, and support work, while men get the stretch assignments that build executive presence. A 2025 McKinsey study tracked this across 120 companies and found that women in leadership are 30 percent less likely than men to receive high-visibility, revenue-generating projects. Luna: 30 percent. That's not a small gap. That's a promotion barrier hiding in plain sight. Lucas: And it compounds. If you don't get the big project, you don't build the track record for the next level. You don't get the sponsorship that comes from delivering visible results. Meanwhile, the operational work you're doing — the process docs, the committee assignments, the 'office housework' — it's necessary, but it doesn't get you promoted. Luna: Right, and we've talked about office housework before, but this is a different layer. It's not just women being asked to take notes or plan the party. It's being given the operations portfolio while a male peer gets the growth portfolio. Lucas: McKinsey breaks it into what they call 'promotable work' versus 'maintenance work.' Promotable work has clear revenue impact, external visibility, or strategic decision-making. Maintenance work keeps the organization running but is rarely rewarded in promotion decisions. And the data shows women leaders spend about 40 percent more of their time on maintenance work than men at the same level. Luna: So it's not just that women are assigned different projects — they're also spending their hours differently. That has implications for burnout, too. Lucas: Absolutely. The delegation gap doesn't just affect career trajectory. It affects day-to-day experience. Women leaders feel stretched thin because they're doing the invisible work plus trying to carve out space for strategic contributions. The McKinsey survey found that 60 percent of women leaders said they regularly work on tasks that could have been done by someone more junior. Luna: And when they try to push back, they risk being seen as not a team player. That's the double bind again. Lucas: Exactly. There's a study from Harvard Business Review that's relevant here. They looked at how managers allocate projects and found that when a woman says no to a low-visibility assignment, she's penalized more harshly than a man who does the same. So the system discourages women from protecting their time for promotable work. Luna: This is where the conversation becomes interesting. If the system is biased, what can individual women actually do? And what should organizations be doing differently? Lucas: Let's start with organizations, because I think that's where the real leverage is. McKinsey recommends that companies audit project assignments the way they audit pay. Track who gets which projects, by gender and by level, and then ask whether the distribution is equitable. A handful of companies we've talked to actually do this now. Luna: That's a powerful idea. If you don't measure it, you can't fix it. Lucas: And they also suggest making the assignment process more transparent. Instead of managers hand-picking who gets the plum projects, post the opportunities openly and let people apply. That reduces the bias of who comes to mind first. Luna: Which matters because a lot of these assignments happen in hallway conversations or quick emails. Men tend to be more vocal about wanting visible work, so managers default to them. Lucas: There's a really concrete example from a tech company I write about. They had a rotational assignment program for high-potential leaders. For years, only men were being selected. When they opened it to self-nominations and required a written statement of interest, the pool of women applicants doubled. And the women who applied were just as qualified. Luna: So the barrier wasn't ambition. It was access. The system was designed for a certain type of self-promotion. Lucas: Exactly. Now on the individual level, what can women do? The HBR study I mentioned also found something encouraging: women who explicitly frame their requests in terms of organizational impact are more successful at negotiating for better assignments. So instead of saying 'I want more visibility,' you say 'Putting me on the client account would increase retention by leveraging the relationships I've already built.' Luna: Frame it as value to the business, not personal advancement. That sidesteps the likeability trap. Lucas: Another tactic McKinsey recommends is to ask for a 'stretch assignment portfolio' in writing during performance reviews. Get your manager to commit to specific projects for you in the next quarter. That prevents you from getting shuffled into maintenance work. Luna: I think the sponsorship piece is crucial here too. You need someone senior who will advocate for you to get the big projects. Not just mentor you, but actively say, 'She should be on that task force.' Lucas: We've talked about sponsorship before, but it's worth repeating here because the delegation gap is exactly where sponsorship matters most. A sponsor can intercept the low-value assignment before it lands on your desk, or make sure you're in the room when the high-value project is being discussed. Luna: And if this episode is landing for you — if you're thinking about your own project portfolio and realizing there's a gap — that's exactly the kind of insight we hope you take away. The reason we can keep having these conversations without ads or paywalls is because listeners who find value in them choose to support the show. Lucas: Yeah, it's a simple model. If today's episode gave you something useful, you can help us keep it going. Just visit buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's all lowercase. It helps us stay independent and keep tackling topics like this one. Luna: And we genuinely appreciate every single person who does that. It makes a difference. Lucas: Alright, back to the delegation gap. I want to talk about one more layer, which is how this gap gets worse the higher you go. McKinsey found that at the senior vice president level, women are actually more qualified on paper than their male peers — more advanced degrees, more years of experience — yet they still get fewer stretch assignments. Luna: That's infuriating. So the gap doesn't close as women prove themselves. It actually persists. Lucas: It does. And it creates this paradox where women leaders are overqualified for their current roles but under-visible for the next level. They're doing the work that doesn't get seen. Luna: I think this is also why we see women leaving corporate leadership at higher rates. They get tired of being the safe pair of hands while men get the exciting launches. Lucas: There's a concept called 'the glass cliff' that's related — women get promoted to leadership roles when the organization is in crisis, but the day-to-day delegation gap means they often aren't set up to succeed. They inherit a mess without having built the strategic muscles. Luna: So what's one concrete step a listener could take tomorrow? A small move that might shift their project mix. Lucas: I'd say look at your calendar for the last two weeks. Categorize every meeting or task as either promotable or maintenance. If the ratio is more than 60-40 toward maintenance, you have a delegation gap. Then pick one maintenance task and propose a way to delegate it or automate it. Use the time you save to volunteer for a project you know has visibility. Luna: That's a really practical starting point. And if you're a manager listening, you might ask yourself: who on my team got the last three high-visibility assignments? Is there a pattern I haven't noticed? Lucas: That's the question. Because the delegation gap isn't about malicious intent. It's about patterns that form because of assumptions we don't examine. And once you examine them, you can start to shift them.