Women have made remarkable progress over the past few decades across the developed world. Today, they outnumber men at universities in almost every affluent country. Their presence in some of the highest-paying professions, such as medicine and law, has nearly tripled in the United States since 1980. At the beginning of the century, a patient in Britain was twice as likely to be treated by a male doctor. Last year, according to the UK’s General Medical Council, female doctors outnumbered their male counterparts for the first time.
Recently, however, the most highly educated generation of women in human history has often appeared to be doing the opposite: stepping back instead of moving forward. In 2024, a study by S&P Global found that in 2023 the proportion of women holding executive positions in the largest U.S. companies declined for the first time after nearly 20 years of continuous growth. In 2025, women filled 38% of new board seats at companies in the S&P 500 index, down from 42% the previous year, extending the decline from the peak reached in 2020, according to The Economist.
The slowdown in women’s professional advancement is not limited to top executive positions. Across 33 OECD member countries, women’s full-time employment rate fell from 78.1% in 2023 to 76.8% in 2024. Although the decline is small, it is the first since PwC began tracking these figures 15 years ago. In March, 78.5% of American women aged 25–54 were participating in the labor force, a record high. Since then, however, their participation has fallen by nearly one percentage point, a much larger decline than that recorded among men.
Mothers Are Stepping Back
The decline appears to be particularly pronounced among college-educated American women with young children. Their labor force participation rate began to fall in 2023 after decades of continuous improvement and has continued to decline each year since then. In 2024, the participation of mothers with young children in the labor market recorded its sharpest drop in the past four decades.
At the same time, the gender pay gap, which had been steadily narrowing for years, has started to widen again. In the United States, it increased in both 2023 and 2024, marking the first consecutive two-year deterioration in 60 years. In 2024, the pay gap also widened in several other developed countries, including Canada, France, and Switzerland.
This may also help explain why women’s professional ambitions no longer keep pace with those of men. An annual survey published in December 2025 by McKinsey and Lean In, the nonprofit organization founded by former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg, asked participants how interested they were in climbing the corporate ladder. Between 2019 and 2023, the share of both men and women seeking promotion increased from seven in ten to eight in ten. By 2025, however, the figure for men had risen to nearly nine in ten, while the percentage for women remained unchanged. Among women at the early stages of their careers, it stood at just 69%. PwC also found that a significant gap remains between men and women in their willingness to pursue more senior positions or take on greater responsibilities.
Why Is This Happening?
One possible explanation for some of these reversals is the statistical impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Labor economists point out that during the lockdowns, a disproportionately large number of low-paid female workers lost their jobs, which artificially narrowed the gender pay gap. Part of its recent widening may simply reflect the return of these women to the labor market, as U.S. data suggest. However, the fact that the gap has continued to widen five years after the end of the lockdowns indicates that other factors are also at work.
Another possible reason is the difficulty of finding childcare. Although daycare has become more affordable in some developed countries thanks to government subsidies, the supply of childcare services remains limited. As a result, waiting lists are long and staff shortages are common. Germany, despite being regarded as a country with relatively affordable childcare, still faces a shortage of more than 300,000 daycare places for children under the age of three.
At the same time, particularly across large parts of Donald Trump’s America, the concepts of diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) have taken on negative connotations. The federal government is openly dismantling related policies, while many businesses are quietly moving in the same direction to avoid clashing with the president. A few years ago, Jamie Dimon, who at the time publicly supported progressive initiatives, would have found it difficult to imagine an all-male shortlist of candidates for a succession plan.
