Impact of the Lost Decade on women's professional growth

Transfer policies in most corporates were written decades ago, for men who had wives managing the home. Today, women carry that penalty. Promotions come with conditions that stall their growth. The policies never changed. The workforce did. Corporate policies were written for a man with a wife at home. Plot twist: today, women are paying the price. I’ve seen it firsthand. Promotions tied to relocation. Transfers that ignore family realities. The fine print in these policies hasn’t changed much in decades. And here’s the irony, the companies that did change are rewriting history in ways nobody imagined. Because they didn’t “include women.”  They built systems where women belonged all along. Take Deloitte in the UK. Instead of giving mothers long leave and fathers token days, they flipped the script. 26 weeks of fully paid parental leave - for all parents. Suddenly, fathers were taking long leaves too.  Mothers stopped carrying the “career penalty.” The result? Deloitte wasn’t just an audit firm anymore.  It became a family-first talent magnet in a brutal job market. Or Tata Motors back home. They launched the SCIP program, Second Careers, Inspiring Possibilities. Women returning from career breaks were offered flexible roles: part-time, consultancy, full-time. Add crèche facilities, extended maternity leave, even adoption leave. The impact? Women on the shop floor jumped from 4% to 11%. One SUV assembly line, 1,200 strong, is now run entirely by women. That’s not diversity as a metric. That’s diversity running operations. Policies are not paperwork. They’re signals. Signals that tell your employees whether you see them as resources… Or as humans with lives. The companies that evolved are winning loyalty, talent, and innovation. The ones that didn’t? They’re still losing their best people to those who did. It’s simple: Write policies for the workforce you have today, not the one that existed 50 years ago.

You know it. I know it. Return to office isn't neutral. It disproportionately impacts women, especially mothers and caregivers. I was honored to share my thoughts with Taylor Telford for her latest The Washington Post piece exploring how aggressive RTO policies are pushing women's progress backwards. (Link in comments) As I shared in this piece, it is not a "choice" when the options are so limited. Women are once again finding themselves pushed out of the paid workforce. Some key takeaways from the article: 👉 After decades of gradual progress, the gender wage gap is widening again. In 2024, women earned just 80.9 cents for every dollar earned by men, dropping from 84 cents in 2022. 👉 For many women, especially those with caregiving responsibilities, rigid office policies are forcing "choices": accept demotions, take pay cuts, or leave entirely. 👉 Turnover among women at companies with strict in-office mandates is nearly THREE TIMES that of men. 👉 The lack of affordable, accessible childcare continues to widen the pay gap. 👉 Policies like RTO and limiting flexibility are stagnating women who feel forced to step off the ladder towards career growth to manage caregiving. This is exactly why at WRK/360, our mission is to help workplaces ACTUALLY be family and caregiving friendly. Not just in rhetoric, but in policy, culture, and practice. The dynamics the article highlights aren’t hypothetical; they are the exact challenges we work with our clients on daily. ✔️ We help companies design policies (e.g., hybrid, flexible schedules, core hours) that allow for collaboration without penalizing caregivers ✔️We coach leadership on equitable performance criteria so that remote or hybrid contributors are not implicitly devalued ✔️We partner with organizations to embed family-supportive programs that retain talent. HR and leadership teams: 👉 Still considering an RTO mandate? Think about what this really means for women and caregivers. 👉 Already have one in place? Run an audit on your turnover. How has this policy impacted men vs. women? Caregivers vs. non-caregivers? What talent are you losing? Together, we can protect the progress made over decades and stop pushing women and caregivers out of the paid workforce.

Today is International Working Mothers Day. Did you know becoming a mother can cost you over £60,000 in lost earnings over ten years? Up to a decade after having their first child, working mothers remain less likely than working fathers to make career-advancing moves, often prioritizing stability and flexibility over growth. This translates directly into lost earnings. In many households, stepping back from work feels like a "rational" choice for mothers. Women often earn less than their (male) partners, making it seem financially sensible for them to be the ones to reduce work commitments to protect the family's overall income. But even modest pay gaps have profound impacts. Consider a woman earning just £5,000 less per year. While £5k might not seem drastic initially, watch how it accumulates: ➡️ After 1 year: £5,000 lost ➡️ After 5 years: £25,000 lost ➡️ After 10 years: £50,000 lost With annual raises factored in (assuming a modest 5% salary increase each year), the seemingly small annual gap becomes significantly larger: • Total loss after 10 years: approximately £62,900. That's over £60,000 in lost income, money that could have supported savings, pensions, property investment, or education. Even small earnings gaps profoundly affect long-term financial wellbeing. 👉 My number one piece of advice for working mothers? Take the long view. Carefully evaluate how your current career choices impact your future earnings, retirement savings, and ability to fully pursue your career ambitions ten years from now. 👉 Ask yourself honestly: are you unintentionally compromising your long-term career goals and your family's future financial security by stepping back now? If the answer is yes, it might be time for you and your partner to rethink and renegotiate.

When a woman leaves at mid-career, it’s not just a vacancy. It’s a decade of knowledge walking out the door. Women in their 30s and 40s often stall - not because they’ve peaked, but because: • Promotions go to those with “face time” over impact • There’s no sponsor advocating for them • Caregiving is treated as a career detour, not a normal life stage The business impact: 📉 Leadership pipelines weaken 📉 Talent shortages grow 📉 Innovation slows Want to keep them? • Create transparent promotion criteria • Build part-time leadership roles • Actively sponsor women into high-visibility projects If you’re losing mid-career women, you’re not just losing talent - you’re losing tomorrow’s leaders.

They're about to screw over women's careers for a generation. And they're calling it "government efficiency." The Supreme Court allowing the Trump Administration to cut 1/3 of Department of Education jobs isn't trimming fat—it's dismantling the only infrastructure that actually moves working-class, Black, and first-generation women into professional careers. Here's what's really happening: Women hold 2/3 of all student debt and earn most bachelor's degrees. When federal education support gets gutted, women get crushed. In Indiana, 57% of IU's students are women. Some of these women are juggling jobs and kids. Forty percent need Pell Grants to afford school. Slower FAFSA processing means more women are dropping out before graduation. What disappears when they slash staff? ·     Financial aid becomes a nightmare. Slower FAFSA processing means delayed Pell Grants, Direct Loans, and Work-Study funds. Single mothers, first-generation students, and students of color—who rely most on federal aid—get screwed first. ·     Student loan help vanishes. Women hold nearly two-thirds of all student debt, but with fewer staff overseeing loan servicers, good luck getting accurate help with repayment or forgiveness programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Teachers, nurses, social workers—mostly women in caregiving roles—will get buried in bureaucratic hell. ·     Title IX enforcement dies. Fewer staff means longer investigations of sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, and unequal access to STEM programs. Fewer proactive audits, less accountability for schools. Women feel less safe on campus with fewer pathways for justice. The result? Fewer women entering law, education, healthcare, and tech—sectors already struggling with gender gaps. My prediction? We'll see massive stalled economic mobility. Not because women stopped trying, but because the ladder they used to climb was quietly removed. If we don't call this out now, we'll wake up in five years wondering why women's economic progress suddenly died. Here's what you can actually do to stop this: ·     Vote like women's futures depend on it. Research candidates' education platforms. Vote in local, state, and federal elections—school boards matter too. ·     Call your reps. Tell your senators and representatives to oppose staffing cuts and demand full funding for educational equity. Make it personal: "These cuts hurt women in our state who rely on financial aid." ·     Go local. Attend school board meetings, organize town halls, and support your public colleges. Policy change happens from the ground up. Public pressure works—but only if it's strategic, persistent, and loud. Everyone: Stop pretending this is about efficiency. It's about keeping women down. What are you seeing? Tell me in the comments. #WomensWork #HigherEd #EconomicJustice #IndianaProfessionals #WorkplaceEquity #EducationPolicy #WorkplaceRights #IndianaEmploymentlawyer

When Sheryl Sandberg's 'Lean In' published 10 years ago, it sparked a public conversation about what was holding women from attaining more power in business, and what companies could do to remove the barriers. The McKinsey & Company and Lean In project that followed -- tracking millions of women and men's experiences and representation at every rung of the corporate ladder -- was aimed at illuminating their progress. In the past decade, which included a global pandemic and the #MeToo movement, companies have changed things, some. But it's been largely at the top, where one or two female appointments can change the gender balance of a small team. At the bottom, there's been very little change in terms of female promotion rates compared to men.. In fact, after improving in recent years, the rate of first promotions into management have regressed. It's probably not a surprise that's happened as many companies are rethinking their diversity commitments. With such uneven progress in the years when companies were pulling out all the stops on gender diversity, what happens now? https://lnkd.in/ep43nQa8 The Wall Street Journal