Goldman Women Are Moving Up

Because we know you need some good news: the new managing director class at Goldman Sachs includes a record number of women (25 percent).

Managing director is the second-highest rank at the bank, just below partner, so the number of women who reach that role is a good barometer of how the firm is doing with women in leadership, both now and in the near future.

The last time Goldman promoted a class of managing directors was in 2013 (when they started doing biennial promotions), and women made up 20 percent of all new MDs then.

It is possible to adopt a less-than-rosy view of this news; to cite one example, the headline in Vanity Fair read, “Goldman Sachs Promotes Record Number of Women, and It’s Still Just 25 Percent.”

But we’re staying positive here, people. This is good news. It’s good news because we need some of that this week, and because Goldman’s new record is a genuinely encouraging sign. Look at it this way: if Goldman keeps up its rate of improvement, it’ll achieve managing director parity in a mere ten years—right on schedule.

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About the Author

Julianne Helinek is Take The Lead's blog editor and writer of the newsletter Take The Lead This Week. She thinks the women she knows are too talented not to be running the world, and she’s especially interested in bringing more men into the gender equality conversation. Julianne is an MBA student at NYU’s Stern School of Business. For more on feminism in the business school world, follow her on Twitter at @thefeministmba.