After three years of gains, women’s employment recovered to pre-pandemic levels in January 2023, according to a series of reports published this month by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Still, disparities persist — especially for working parents.
IWPR’s analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data found that the number of employed U.S. women fell by more than 12 million between February and April 2020 and that the level of employed women did not surpass early 2020 levels until January 2023. The organization noted that men experienced the same level of recovery 11 months faster; the slower recovery may contribute to lost earnings and reduced wage growth for women.
Working mothers face a particular challenge because of a “significant” labor force participation gap, according to IWPR. The organization found that 73.7% of working mothers were in the labor force, as of 2023, compared to 94.9% of fathers. Women were also more likely than men to spend at least 30 minutes providing care for children or adults during a typical day.
IWPR’s recommendations for addressing these disparities are largely intended for government officials, but there is much that employers can do to help, said Ariane Hegewisch, senior fellow at IWPR and co-author of the organization’s reports on post-COVID recovery for women.
Continued need for flexibility despite RTO mandates
One of the organization’s ideas, the expansion of flexible work options, appears to run counter to the current trend among U.S. employers.
Flexible schedules and access to remote work are helpful in retaining and recruiting women who have caregiving responsibilities as well as those who have a disability or chronic illness, according to Hegewisch. In many ways, she said, the pandemic helped employers understand the potential talent benefits of flexibility.
“What COVID did was push people beyond their confidence threshold on remote working,” Hegewisch said. “Some HR people [and managers] were willing and happy to allow people some flexibility because they could see it didn’t make any difference in and of itself to productivity.”
But the tide has shifted significantly against full-time remote work in recent years, with more and more big names opting to embrace a return to the office. One KPMG survey found that 83% of global CEOs expected to have a full return of in-office work by 2027, CFO Dive reported.
That's despite the lack of definitive data showing that remote work has any negative effect on overall productivity, Hegewisch said. Some research, including a 2024 BLS analysis, found that the mass adoption of remote work following the pandemic positively correlated with an increase in productivity over the same period.
Meanwhile, a 2024 IWPR survey of female workers found that those who had remote or flexible work options were more likely to be satisfied with their work-life balance, more likely to report good or excellent health and more likely to report lower rates of anxiety than those without such options.
Hegewisch said she recognizes that remote work is not possible in all occupations but that it can be an option for many and may take the form of a hybrid arrangement where necessary. She noted that HR professionals who want to maintain flexible work amid the return-to-office trend should center their conversations on job architecture around output and helping employees perform better.
“It shouldn’t just be focused on where you perform your work,” Hegewisch said.
Child care is a persistent need
Child care presents a very similar barrier, and IWPR found that the recovery of mothers’ labor force participation post-pandemic paralleled the recovery of jobs in the childcare sector.
Another measure of this issue comes by way of a 2023 BabyCenter survey, which found that working mothers experienced a childcare difficulty nearly four days out of every month. Nearly half of the respondents said they had considered reducing their work hours or stopping work altogether to save money.
It can be cost-prohibitive for employers to directly pay for employees’ child care, Hegewisch said, but there are other options that might assist parents encountering childcare-related difficulties. For example, HR might consider providing vouchers, access to concierge services or other resources for finding and selecting a nearby provider.
“I used to be dismissive of efforts to provide information about what is a good child care center,” Hegewisch said, “but I’ve come to realize that that information can go a long way because it saves people time and worry about who is reputable in a sector where quality really matters to people.”
Paid family leave is another consideration, particularly in traditionally male-dominated fields like construction. But employees, especially women, might not take all available parental leave in part because of concerns that co-workers might view them as unserious about their careers, Hegewisch said. Management can proactively prepare teams for the possibility that team members might take leave, she added, in order to reassure employees they are able to do so.
Focus on training, development to counter occupational segregation
Occupational segregation, which describes the overrepresentation or underrepresentation of specific demographics in certain job categories, is also a sticking point in the post-pandemic environment. IWPR found that while occupational segregation of women and men generally fell since 2019, segregation increased for parents, especially for those with children under age 13.
Hegewisch said that the pandemic created skill shortages that led companies to embrace broader recruiting strategies including reaching out to different talent pools, women included. As a result, women occupied a higher share of roles in fields such as management, business and finance, according to IWPR, though Black and Latina women remain overrepresented in low-paying service jobs.
“During the last four years, there has been much more conscious effort at rectifying those past biases that are deliberately, but indirectly, limiting equal access to recruitment and advancement,” Hegewisch said.
IWPR cited training as another vector for addressing job segregation issues. Mentorship and upskilling opportunities tend to elude women in the workplace, according to a 2024 survey by HR vendor HiBob, which found that less than half of organizations in its poll offered such programs to prepare women for future roles.
Recent pushback against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives has led companies to roll back related hiring practices. Hegewisch said it is too early to say, however, whether anti-DEI sentiments and regulatory actions against DEI programs will negatively effect the disparities women face in the workplace. That’s in part because it is unclear what kinds of DEI programs might be considered “illegal” in the context of federal employment laws like Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
“My sense is that, on the whole, [DEI] initiatives were there for good business reasons,” Hegewisch said. “Companies might be saying, ‘Alright, let’s wait for the dust to settle.’”
