Ladies might unwittingly be residing via a turning level of their labor historical past. A whole bunch of 1000’s are packing their desks leaving their jobs—each by alternative, and involuntarily—whereas folks preach in the event that they ruined the office, and a few CEOs name for a extra “masculine” firm tradition. Now, enterprise leaders are calling out the backtrack of ladies’s careers, and former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg warns of a harmful development.
“I’m 56, so that is my fourth decade within the office, and we’re in a very troubling second by way of the rhetoric on ladies. You see it all over the place, in all of the sectors,” Sandberg just lately instructedCNN. “However what I’ve seen is after we make progress, we backslide, we make progress, we backslide.”
“And I feel this can be a main second of backsliding,” she mentioned.
The long-time Meta govt, bestselling creator, and billionaire pulled out a slew of worrying info and figures. She famous that throughout the first eight months of 2025, greater than 455,000 ladies left the U.S. workforce—whereas 100,000 males stepped into jobs throughout the similar interval. And the plight has been even worse for girls of shade; Sandberg mentioned the unemployment charge amongst Black ladies presently rests at 7.5%, considerably increased than the nationwide common of 4.4%, and even larger than the approximate 3.5% of jobless white women and men.
Past the actual fact this regarding phenomenon is stunting ladies’s careers and financial livelihoods, it’s additionally stifling the U.S. economic system. Even American companies that snub working ladies with C-suite titles are capturing themselves within the foot—Sandberg mentioned corporations with 15% or extra ladies in senior administration carry out higher.
“It doesn’t matter what’s occurring within the total zeitgeist, corporations don’t have an excuse to write down off half their inhabitants,” Sandberg continued. “When you obtained workforce participation for girls within the U.S. simply as much as the degrees of different rich international locations, that might be an extra 4.2% GDP development, and our economic system grows lower than 2% a yr. That’s quite a lot of development to depart on the desk.”
Ladies’s workforce plights: RTO, shrinking alternatives, and stereotypes
As a whole bunch of 1000’s of ladies disappeared from payrolls this yr, consultants pointed to at least one main perpetrator: employers forcing staffers again into the workplace with strict RTO insurance policies.
Main corporations together with Amazon, JPMorgan, Citigroup, and Dell have all imposed stricter in-person insurance policies in 2025, a lot to the behest of their employees. And this company development is resulting in some severe staffing penalties. Labor power participation of moms with youngsters beneath the age of 5 dropped from 80% to 77% between January and June 2025, in keeping with an October KPMG examine—and people with bachelor’s levels had been hit the toughest. Nonetheless, the sharp fall off was no coincidence. The exodus of working mothers coincided with a close to doubling of full-time RTO mandates amongst Fortune 500 corporations.
“Since late 2023, ladies with younger kids have been leaving the labor power…Over the identical interval, males with younger kids have elevated their participation within the labor power,” the KPMGreport notes. “The childcare disaster is including further stress to the labor provide. Employers are presently dropping expertise; consequently, the U.S. economic system will develop extra slowly.”
Working moms aren’t the one ones up towards an employment disaster. It’s estimated 600,000 Black ladies have been shut out of the workforce since February, in keeping with an evaluation from gender economist Katica Roy. Throughout that point, 297,000 misplaced their jobs and 75,000 had been edged out of the labor power, whereas 223,000 are nonetheless unemployed. American job development is sputtering, and when open roles are lastly up for grabs, competitors is fierce—with hiring decisionmaking traditionally stacked towards their favor.
However there’s extra at play behind the “main backsliding” of ladies within the workforce, past RTO and shrinking job alternatives. American philanthropist and ex-wife of Microsoft founder Invoice Gates, Melinda French Gates, laid out 4 methods ladies are being held again in company America. Working ladies are pressured to make “not possible tradeoffs” between caregiving and their careers; they’re nonetheless being harassed on the job, regardless of the #MeToo motion beginning much-needed discourse on office tradition; the stereotype that ladies are “not lower out for management” refuses to die; they usually have a a lot more durable time elevating capital for his or her companies.
“It’s very regarding to see so many ladies leaving the workforce—however if you happen to’ve been listening all alongside to what ladies say about their careers, it’s not shocking,” French Gates instructedFortune in October.
“I wish to see extra ladies main—making choices, directing sources, and shaping insurance policies on the highest ranges of society,” French Gates continued. “That requires us to verify they’re not going through distinctive limitations alongside the way in which to positions of energy.”
