THE ECONOMIST: Women’s progress at work appears to be stalling

Women have made extraordinary gains in the past few decades across the rich world. They now outnumber men on university campuses in virtually every wealthy country.

At work, many have been enthusiastically “leaning in”, as Sheryl Sandberg, then Facebook’s second-in-command, urged them to do in a book in 2013.

Their representation among the highest-paying professions, including doctors and lawyers, has nearly tripled in America since 1980.

At the turn of the century a British patient was twice as likely to see a man. Last year the number of female physicians exceeded those of men for the first time, according to Britain’s General Medical Council, a public body.

Recently, however, the most highly qualified cohort of women in human history has often appeared to be leaning out.

In 2024 a study by S&P Global, a compiler of indices, found that women’s share of executive positions in listed American companies fell for the first time in 2023 after nearly 20 years of uninterrupted growth.

In 2025 women secured 38 per cent of new board seats at companies in the S&P 500 index of large American firms, down from 42 per cent the previous year and prolonging a retreat from their peak in 2020.

In its last round of partner promotions, in 2024, Goldman Sachs named a smaller share of female partners than in the previous round, for the first time in more than a decade.

A year later the share of new female managing directors at the Wall Street bank fell, too.

Last month Marianne Lake, a female frontrunner to succeed Jamie Dimon atop JPMorgan Chase was relegated and another, Jennifer Piepszak, bowed out last year, leaving an unusually pale and male line-up for the top job.

It is not just at the top that the progression of women in work is stalling or even going into reverse.

Across 33 members of the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, the share of women in full-time work declined from 78.1 per cent in 2023 to 76.8 per cent a year later — a small dip but also the first one since PwC, a consultancy, started tracking the data 15 years ago.

In March 78.5 per cent of American women aged 25-54 were in the labour force, an all-time high. Since then their participation has fallen by almost a percentage point, a much sharper fall than seen among men.

University-educated American women with young families appear to be leading the retreat. Their labour-force participation rate took a turn in 2023 after decades of improvement, and has fallen every year since.

Last year marked the sharpest drop in participation by mothers with young children in four decades.

After consistently closing in recent years, the gender pay gap is also opening up again. In America it widened in both 2023 and 2024, the first consecutive two-year decline in 60 years. In 2024 it also widened in several other rich countries, including in Canada, France and Switzerland.

For British women in their 40s, who were starting their careers when Ms Sandberg was telling them to lean in, the gap edged back up.

Relatedly, perhaps, women’s professional aspirations no longer match men’s. An annual survey published in December 2025 by McKinsey, a consultancy, and Lean In, a non-profit founded by Ms Sandberg, asks respondents to indicate their interest in climbing up the corporate ladder.

Between 2019 and 2023 the share of both men and women keen on a promotion rose from seven in 10 to eight in 10.

By 2025 it had risen to nearly nine in 10 for men but remained flat for women. For female entry-level workers it was just 69 per cent. PwC also finds a persistent gap in men’s and women’s intention to ask for a bigger job.

One reason for some of these reversals may have to do with the arithmetic aftermath of the COVID pandemic.

Labour economists caution that disproportionate numbers of low-wage female workers lost their jobs during the lockdowns, artificially narrowing the gender pay gap.

Some of the recent widening may reflect those women piling back into the labour market — as the American data suggest. Still, the gap’s expansion half a decade after lockdowns ended suggests something else at play.

Difficulty finding child care is another potential culprit. Although nurseries have become more affordable in some rich countries lately thanks to subsidies, supply is often constrained.

That means frequent long waiting lists and staff shortages. Germany, considered to have affordable child care, still lacks more than 300,000 nursery places for children under three.

At the same time, especially in swathes of Donald Trump’s America, diversity, equity and inclusion have become dirty words.

The federal government is proudly dismantling DEI policies. So, more subtly, are many companies that do not want to cross the alpha-male-in-chief.

A few years ago Mr Dimon, then a champion of progressive causes, would probably not have dreamed of an all-male short-list of names to succeed him.