Latinas Hold Just 1% Of C-Suite Jobs—Despite Wanting Promotions More Than Any Group

Nellie Borrero wasn’t a typical entry-level hire when she started her job at Accenture in 1986. The daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants was still attending night classes at Lehman College to finish her bachelors degree when she was hired to the professional services firm’s college relations department.

“That already put me in a place of thinking, ‘I’m not good enough,’ ” says Borrero, who has since ascended to the role of managing director heading global diversity and inclusion initiatives at the firm. Add a Nuyorican accent, identified with Puerto Rican immigrants living in New York, and she worried about the biases she’d face. “When I walk into a room with this accent, to some it’s an indicator of how they perceive my level of intelligence, or lack thereof.”

While some things have changed, biases and disadvantages in the workplace are still persistent, Borrero says, and the numbers suggest there’s still a long way to go for Latinas to reach more positions of power. A report released Thursday by LeanIn, a non-profit organization founded by former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg, details just how little Latinas are represented at the top of corporate hierarchies.

Just 1% of C-suite executives are Latinas, while 27.4% of those roles are held by women overall, the report found. They also face a persistent pay gap that leads to $1.2 million in average missed earnings over a lifetime, the report calculates, and a wider falloff in representation between entry-level roles and the C-suite than any other ethnic group. Then there’s the challenges they face while climbing the ranks themselves, the report describes from interviews with Latina executives, from being the “only” in a room to receiving the fewest promotions in spite of having the most interest in reaching them, the report finds.

“It has nothing to do with Latinas’ capabilities,” says LeanIn CEO Rachel Thomas.

The report also found that Latinas encounter more microaggressions, such as assumptions about their immigration status or language abilities, with 74% of Latinas reporting they had experienced them compared to 58% of women overall.

Assumptions about Latin culture, like valuing having children, can also lead to assumptions about Latinas’ commitment to work. “They’re often seen as more family-focused and less career-focused than other groups of women,” adds Thomas.

The “State of Latinas in Corporate America” report follows almost ten years of research done for the organization’s annual Women in the Workplace study in partnership with McKinsey and Company, Thomas says. “We realized we hadn’t done a deep dive specifically on [their] experiences.”

It draws on data collected for the non-profit’s flagship 2023 report. For that report, 276 companies employing more than 10 million people across the United States and Canada submitted employee demographic data and talent pipeline patterns that were analyzed by LeanIn. (Among those, 274 also submitted HR programs and policies). The results were then aggregated by industry and weighted by the composition of the Fortune 500 in 2022. For the new report, interviews with more than two dozen Latinas conducted between 2021-2024 were also included.

The underrepresentation spans entire careers. Latinas make up 9% of the total U.S. population but just under 5% of entry-level workers in corporate roles, the analysis found, which include sectors like banking, tech and professional and information services. “There is a big emphasis on education within the Latino community,” says Diana Caba, vice-president for economic development at the Hispanic Federation. “But there needs to be some guidance, from either sponsors or mentors, to see what the path [into a corporate job] looks like.”

From there, Latina representation falls 78% on the road to the C-suite, the largest for any ethnic gender or gender group surveyed. The prevalence of white males, in comparison, increases 64% between starting jobs (where they hold 34.4% of roles) and the top layer of management (where nearly 56.4% identify as white men). Just 1% of C-suite executives identify as Latina.

“You come into an organization and then see others that joined with you, and you see them start to grow within their career,” recounts Borrero of her own path. “All of a sudden, you’re being left behind.”

Indeed, women of all backgrounds account for 10.4% of Fortune 500 CEOs, but the numbers are bleak for Latinas in the corner office. There is currently just one Latina CEO among Fortune 500 companies: Priscilla Almodovar, who leads mortgage lender Fannie Mae, according to Fortune. Just two Fortune 500 CEOs are Black women, and 3 companies have Asian women CEOs, according to LeanIn.

“It’s important for leaders to understand the unique challenges Latinas face in the corporate world and the way cultural norms can sometimes mask strengths,” Almodovar said in an emailed statement to Forbes.

Such cultural barriers are leading to “compounding obstacles” throughout Latinas’ careers that prevent them from getting to the top. For instance, as one Latina employee shared in the report, managers may not notice Latina workers coming in early and leaving late because the culture has such a well-known emphasis on hard work.

Though the report found that more Latinas said they were interested in getting promoted than white women, on average—87% versus 78%, respectively—their ambition can often go unrecognized. They’re also less likely to say their managers ensure they get credit for their ideas: Just 47% say they do, compared to 51% among all women.

This can impact financial compensation. Latinas in management, business and financial operations roles, on average, make 64% of the pay of white, non-Hispanic men, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau cited by LeanIn. But just 27% of the Latinas surveyed for the report believe their manager advocated for raises for them.

“There is a pattern of Latinas getting less of those important types of support,” says Thomas. “It has implications for how often they are promoted, how quickly they’re moving through the pipeline and how they’re getting paid.”