Today, DEI is a loaded term in a fraught politcal and cultural climate, but current disfavor doesn’t change the fact is that inequalities of many types persist in the workplace. Cue a new ABC report that highlights how women are actively leaving the U.S. workforce in increasing numbers because the cost of child care is so high. “It’s the 21st century,” you may be thinking, “shouldn’t this be impacting men as caregivers on an equal footing?” Explain that to the nearly half-million women who’ve dropped out of the labor market since January, the report says.
The surge in women workers deciding that the working life isn’t for them has been “driven largely by women with young children,” Minnesota’s ABC affiliate 5 Eyewitness News reports. Some 450,000 women have followed this path since the start of 2025, and the news outlet points to one clear reason: “the high cost of daycare has been to blame.”
The report quotes financial planner Bjorn Amundson of Saint Paul-based financial planning firm Quarry Hill Advisors, who suggests that before families make this big decision they should split expenses across different accounts that reflect today’s polarizing financial realities. Mortgages, for example, won’t change, but, as Amundson notes, “discretionary expenses” will — do you really need that Netflix subscription as well as the HBO and Apple TV ones? So it may make sense to practice having one parent at home for a while, “and see what it feels like before you pull the trigger. It’s one of the toughest decisions you make as a parent.”
But there’s a bigger trend at play here, with KSTP pointing out that the loss of so many female workers could not only “erase the historic gains women have made since the pandemic, but also reshape the labor force for years to come.” A BBC report from August that tackled this trend noted that “after years of leaning in and pursuing career growth, an emerging slice of college-educated women are either going part time or quitting their jobs entirely.” At the time, the BBC said data showed that between “January and July 2025, 212,000 women left the workforce at the same time that 44,000 men entered it.”
Meanwhile, other reports suggest one driving factor for this trend is the emergence of the “sandwich generation.” As Business Insider recently put it, the “growing share of American workers” are facing a difficult reality of “caring for both aging parents and children at the same time.”
Can we blame the “tradwife” trend for some of this — a conservative-leaning notion that women’s place really is in the home? The trend, science news site Phys.org contends, is all about a “modern-day housewife who embraces traditional gender roles, typically focusing on homemaking, childcare and supporting her husband, often while sharing her idealized lifestyle on social media.”
But a recent study highlighted in this report suggests that there are deeper, non-political reasons involved that play into the explanation of why so many women are leaving the U.S. workforce. In a survey of 1,000 younger women age 18–34, researchers found that “what attracts them to tradwife content is less the male-breadwinner female-caregiver model and more the aesthetic of simplicity, leisure and escape from the pressures of increasingly demanding yet insecure work.”
Meanwhile, a new op-ed at the Boston Globe shines a light on a totally different facet of this issue: it may be “provocative” to say it, but “the smartest workplaces usually have more women,” the article contends.
Why should you care about all this?
Because, amid complex, changing geopolitical circumstances, the reality is that if your company’s benefits and compensation policies result in excluding more women than you may have thought, you’re simply missing out on a long list of potentially fabulous job candidates.
Citigroup’s CEO Jane Fraser landed her company in the spotlight this year for precisely this reason: by embracing hybrid-friendly work policies that are appealing to working mothers, Fraser considered she’s putting her company at a competitive advantage for hiring talented workers who otherwise may stay at home, or seek jobs at rival firms.
Kit Eaton
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