More Women Are Working Than Ever. What Does HR Need to Do Now?

Women have made tremendous gains in the U.S. workforce since the mid-20th century, when, decade after decade, increasing numbers of women identified having a career as equally — or even more — important as having a family.

Cut to 2024, when women in their prime working ages — between 25 and 54 years old — reached their highest labor-force participation rate ever, surpassing the prior record hit in 2023.

Women now outnumber men among college-educated workers, are steadily moving to achieve parity with men at every level, and are increasing their presence in the highest-paying jobs in industries historically dominated by men.

Much of that progress has been due to changing societal expectations for women — especially wives and mothers — but credit should also be given to employers’ efforts to support the advancement of women in the workplace. Yet, critical work remains.

Women remain underrepresented across senior management roles, with the disparity growing at each higher rung of the career ladder. Structural problems, such as biases and the challenge of balancing work and family, must be addressed for more women to thrive.

“This is the same conversation we’ve had for 50 years,” said Wendy Smith, professor of management at the Alfred Lerner College of Business & Economics and co-director of the Women’s Leadership Initiative at the University of Delaware in Newark. “We know the value of women and what it takes for women to be successful in the workplace, but for some reason, there are still these obstacles that prevent them from being most effective. Why can’t we get there?”

Experts agree that business and HR leaders can do more to improve organizational practices. Efforts should be made around recruiting, developing, and retaining women to ensure sustained progress and build a workplace culture that celebrates the strengths women bring to work.

Positive Data, Mixed Experiences

Today, women represent slightly less than half of all U.S. employees (47%), numbering about 80 million, compared to 90 million men, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). But women’s labor force participation is on the rise, especially among women in what are considered the prime-age working years. This is thanks, in part, to women more frequently prioritizing their careers and delaying starting families until later in their 30s or 40s, said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.   

Since January 2024, about 78% of women ages of 25-54 have participated in the labor force — which means either being employed or looking for work — compared with 89% of men from that age group. That number drops to 57% when all women over age 16 are included, compared to 68% of all men over age 16. 

Previously, women’s overall labor force participation maxed out in 2000 before hitting a plateau, Pollak explained. It started to fall in the early 21st century but began to rise again in 2015. Then the pandemic hit, dealing working women a major setback, especially in front-line service roles such as retail, education, health care, and hospitality. Post-pandemic, however, women returned to work in full force, and now, their participation rate has well eclipsed pre-pandemic numbers. 

The potential for growth is high right now due to the combination of a tight labor market and demand for more talent, Pollak said. 

“When you see unemployment at 4% or less, you see improvements in women’s labor force participation,” she said. “Employers cast a wider net, start actively recruiting nontraditional candidates, and offer more flexibility, creating conditions attractive enough for people on the margins of the labor force to dive into full employment.” 

Pollak also pointed to future workforce trends favoring a boom for working women. “The fastest growing jobs — health care and service jobs — are dominated by women,” she said.

Women are also increasingly moving into traditionally male occupations such as IT, creating a cascading impact.

“When you go from having no women to even 10% to 15% women, it forces an HR change,” Pollak said. “Companies start to think about how to support women in their organization. The culture becomes more inclusive. More women enter, more women are promoted and mentored and rise into leadership. In many industries, we have reached that initial tipping point.”

Megan McConnell, a partner at McKinsey & Company, noted that women’s representation has increased at every level of corporate management in the U.S. over the last decade. Women make up 29% of C-suite positions today, compared with just 17% in 2015, according to McKinsey & Company research. The numbers are even more dismal for women of color, who represent just 7% of current C-suite positions, a number that’s only gone up 4 percentage points since 2017.

“Women have made gains, but those gains are fragile,” McConnell said. “One challenge is that a lot of that progress came from external hiring instead of internal promotions. We haven’t yet cracked the code on internally promoting women.”

That’s particularly true for nonwhite women, Smith said, “and that points to structural barriers and biases.”

Barriers to Advancement

Experts point to long-standing issues including bias, sexism, and harassment as still negatively impacting women’s experiences at work.

Member Resource: What is meant by 'belonging' in the workplace, and how can it be measured?

“Male-dominated behaviors in corporate America make it harder for women to be their authentic selves at work,” said Chandra Robinson, vice president in the HR practice at Gartner.

The McKinsey & Company study found that many women are not satisfied with their career advancement because they feel they don’t get enough support from managers, said they miss out on growth and networking opportunities, and reported experiencing microaggressions at work, such as being talked over or having their ideas dismissed.

“More women than men believe that being a woman is going to hold them back in their career at some point,” McConnell said. “Many more women say that that has already happened. Women are still just as likely to be the only one of their gender in the room, especially at more senior levels, which could make them feel like they’re under additional scrutiny or not able to offer a different perspective.”

But the most pervasive obstacle to women’s career advancement in the U.S. is the lack of flexibility, which especially challenges working mothers.  

“Taking care of the home and family remains the leading reason mothers don’t participate in the labor force,” said Stephanie Ferguson Melhorn, senior director of workforce and international labor policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. She specifically cited the alarmingly high cost of child care. “Families often conclude it is better to have one parent remain home to provide that care, and the most common choice is the mother.” 

Biological determinants and cultural norms do influence who dons the caretaker mantle, but employers also tip the scale through inflexibility, Pollak added.

“Where the option is 100% in-person work or no work and nothing offered in between, some women will drop out to raise their children,” she said. “That is why some industries remain male–dominated, even when the entry-level cohorts to that industry are more gender-balanced.”

HR’s Role in Women’s Workplace Success

HR can help foster a workplace culture that empowers women to succeed. That means championing inclusive hiring and promotions, cultivating allyship, offering flexibility and caregiving benefits, and supporting career development.

Robinson said that HR must first create an employee experience framework that recognizes employees as whole people. “Work is a subset of life, not separate from it,” she said. 

Work/life harmonization is a top driver of attrition for women, though compensation certainly plays a role. 

“HR can re-evaluate the company’s employee value proposition with women in mind,” Robinson suggested. They should “take a closer look at compensation, flexible work arrangements, incentives to join the organization and incentives to stay, ensuring employees have access to and are encouraged to pursue holistic well-being.” 

Workplace Flexibility 

The adoption of remote work is a key reason behind women’s return to the workforce since the pandemic, particularly for working mothers. 

“Schedule flexibility is the area with the biggest opportunity,” Pollak said. “We’ve already seen it in some industries. Pharmacists have become a highly female occupation because the job allows for flexibility. Other industries could be organized with more flexibility in mind. Inflexible workplace culture really is an HR issue and requires creative HR solutions.” 

Member Resource: Managing Flexible Work Arrangements

McConnell said that flexible schedules and remote and hybrid work arrangements can benefit all working people, but particularly those with caregiving responsibilities. 

“For women in ‘deskless’ front-line roles, scheduling predictability is as important as flexibility,” McConnell said. These roles include noncorporate positions with erratic schedules, such as nursing.         

But flexibility can also come with pitfalls, experts caution. 

“Women are more likely to take the at-home option, so be careful that you’re not leaving women behind when offering hybrid and remote work models,” said Victoria Mattingly, an industrial organizational psychologist and founder and CEO of Mattingly Solutions, a workplace inclusion consulting firm in Pittsburgh. “Many times, people get rewarded because they are seen. Remote workers can be left out of in-person relationship building and collaboration, which can influence career advancement.”

Managers can avoid this by scheduling regular meetings with remote staff to get caught up and to fill them in on what is happening onsite as well as striving to keep remote employees engaged with interactions and team building.

The Power of Promotions

The single greatest factor that impedes greater gender diversity is promotion standards, according to McKinsey & Company research.  These inconsistencies become concerning when you see entry-level cohorts that are split evenly among men and women, while men in later career stages are overrepresented in management.

“Companies are doing more to de-bias hiring practices and performance reviews but need to go further,” McConnell said. “Having internal mobility be much more systematic and formal would benefit women.”

McConnell recommended measuring and tracking the promotion and attrition rates for women, in addition to equipping managers to support women’s well-being, address disrespectful behavior, and push for career advancement.

“What types of protocols are you putting in place to ensure that when inequities in hiring and promotions show up, they are getting quickly identified and corrected?” Mattingly said. “Training is a good first step, but accountability and bias mitigation is needed.”

Stronger Together

Establishing and nurturing a culture of mentorship within the workplace holds immense value and significance. “It’s been proven that women who cultivate great mentors and allies are the most successful,” Smith said. 

Member Resource: How to Build a Successful Mentorship Program

Mentorship programs can help women navigate and accelerate their career paths. Mentored women, in turn, mentor others, creating a virtuous cycle that fosters continuous learning and development. A robust mentorship program can also help attract and retain more women and ensure a pipeline of well-prepared women for succession planning. 

Mattingly also differentiated between mentors and allies — or, to use another term, active advocates.

“An ally is someone who uses their power to advocate for and support someone who is not like them — it is a largely untapped area,” she said. “As long as women’s barriers in the workplace remain a woman’s issue, it is never going to be solved. If we have more higher-placed men, we need to actively involve them in gender-equity efforts if we are ever going to see progress.” 

To read more about workplace solidarity and advocacy, see “From Performative to Proactive: The Next Era of Workplace Advocacy for Women” on page 50.

Mattingly added that she would like to see more training to arm senior leaders to be better supporters of women at work. 

"There is a big mismatch between what people who say they are allies are doing and what women say would be helpful,” Mattingly said. “People are becoming more aware of the issues, but when a microaggression happens, it would be helpful if an ally takes an action in the moment.”

Microaggressions — or unconscious expressions of discriminatory views toward marginalized groups — against women in the workplace can include: 

• Being interrupted by men in meetings (the McKinsey & Company study found that women are more than twice as likely as men to be interrupted).

• Being told to dress in a certain way. 

• Being told they’re too sensitive to inappropriate statements or jokes.

• Being referred to as “endearing” names such as “sweetheart” or “honey.” 

• Men taking credit for women’s ideas or work.

Establishing strong professional networks is another way to further employees’ growth as well as boost collaboration, productivity, and retention.  It’s important, Mattingly said, that women not only seek out mentors — who can support, advise, or guide women in their careers — but also sponsors, who go beyond the role of guidance and proactively position them for advancement. 

“Research shows that women are over-mentored and under-sponsored,” she said. “Sponsorship means advocating for someone to get them that promotion or critical assignment, into a strong network, or up the career ladder.”

Beyond ‘Lean In’

It’s been valuable to push women to “lean in” — as former Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg famously wrote — to advocate for advancement themselves, Smith said. However, that effort won’t be successful unless the systems women are leaning into are changed. 

“It’s not either teaching women to be better advocates for themselves or changing the organizational conditions. It has to be both,” Smith said. “Doing both reinforces each effort.”  

The work of elevating women is consequential, she added. 

“Sometimes, I perceive a certain wariness in moving this conversation forward,” Smith said. “The gains are not just for women, they’re for everyone. If we can raise up more women and people with diverse perspectives, we can solve our greatest problems more effectively.”