While women account for a record 28% of top positions at US companies, there’s trouble lower down the corporate ladder that jeopardises women’s career trajectories — and companies’ abilities to build the diverse senior leadership they say they want, according to an annual report on women in the workplace by McKinsey and Lean In.org released on 5 October.

As companies have paid more attention to gender and racial diversity, progress has been fastest in the most visible areas — like the board and the C-suite. But the pipeline to those posts hasn’t seen as much improvement.