The State of Women in 2026: Progress, Pay Gaps and Participation

Summary

---

WSJ What’s News – The State of Women in 2026: Progress, Pay Gaps and Participation

Host: Alex Osola
Guests: Harriet Tory (WSJ Economics Reporter), Matthew Nestler (Senior Economist, KPMG)
Date: March 15, 2026

---

Overview

This episode, in recognition of Women's History Month, explores the current state of American women in the workforce in 2026. Host Alex Osola is joined by economics reporter Harriet Tory and senior economist Matthew Nestler to discuss both the successes and persistent challenges women face. The discussion covers post-pandemic workforce trends, widening pay gaps, barriers to participation such as caregiving, and implications for the broader U.S. economy.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Workforce Progress Since the Pandemic

• Women’s professional standing has improved: Higher rates of college education, increased representation in managerial and C-suite roles, and growing financial influence.
  • Quote: “Women now control about a third of all retail financial assets in the US and that's expected to rise to between 40 and 45% by 2030.” – Alex Osola (00:32)
• Despite gains, the ground is uneven: The pay gap has widened, childcare costs have climbed, and the rollback of DEI policies has slowed diverse appointments.

2. Pandemic’s Lasting Impact

• Caregiving as a Primary Strain
  • “Caregiving is really the answer to that question.” – Harriet Tory (02:25)
  • School closures and increased domestic burdens pushed many women (more than men) to exit the labor force temporarily.
• Remote Work: Double-Edged Sword
  • “There are many women out there who have profited from that and who have found a better work life balance... but certainly initially, it was really tough.” – Harriet Tory (02:25)
  • Greater remote work options have benefited educated women, but pullback to office-centric work is now reversing some gains.

3. Trends by Demographics and Industry

• Aggregate Numbers Mask Disparities
  • “We would expect [participation] to decline... If you look at women in prime working age… January actually hit an all time high in participation. But those aggregate figures can mask a lot of differences underneath the hood.” – Matthew Nestler (04:23)
• Impact Across Sectors
  • Gains for women in information and manufacturing, while healthcare and education have shown declines.
• Mothers of Young Children: A Unique Challenge
  • “Over the past couple of years… moms with young children under five, there's been a decline in employment, but also of participation.” – Matthew Nestler (05:18)
  • Distinct from previous economic crises: This time, fewer young mothers are even looking for jobs, not just unable to find them.

4. Barriers Keeping Women Out

• Cooling Labor Market
  • “The labor market is just not that great for everybody... harder if you're on the sidelines, to break back in.” – Harriet Tory (06:49)
• Structural Challenges: Childcare and Elder Care
  • The lack of accessible, affordable childcare and growing elder care responsibilities limit women's full participation—even among highly educated groups.

5. Widening Pay Gap

• Wider in 2025 Than in Nearly a Decade
  • “Women working full time made 81 cents on the dollar compared to men, which is the widest pay gap since 2016.” – Alex Osola (08:03)
• Return-to-Office Push as a Factor
  • “Many women that I spoke to... said, I can't do this. It's too hard with my kids or with my caregiving responsibilities... so they were quitting and taking a different job. And often that came with a pay cut.” – Harriet Tory (08:19)
• Personal Tradeoffs for Flexibility
  • Workers value flexibility enough to accept lower pay.

6. Broader Economic Implications

• Labor Supply Squeeze
  • “This is all happening within the context of two major trends. One, the aging population... two, the shift to a more restrictive immigration policy... every employer is likely to face some challenges attracting and retaining workers.” – Matthew Nestler (09:30)
• Women’s Employment as Economic Signal
  • Women's ability to work, shaped by family care demands, is now a central economic issue, not just a "women's" issue.

7. Summary Reflections: Where Do Women Stand in 2026?

• A Story of Divergence
  • “At the high level... employment shares are at or near all time highs. That is a success story... but that does mask a lot of differences among specific groups.” – Matthew Nestler (10:37)
• Education vs. Structural Hurdles
  • “American women are more educated than ever before. So in many ways women are in a very strong position... But there are certain structural issues that are just difficult and hard to overcome...” – Harriet Tory (11:02)
• Limited State Support Intensifies Challenges
  • The U.S. lacks the nationwide childcare infrastructure seen in Europe, leaving most families to bear costs alone.

---

Memorable Quotes & Key Timestamps

• “Caregiving is really the answer to that question.” – Harriet Tory, on why the pandemic forced many women out of work (02:25)
• “If you look at women in prime working age… January actually hit an all time high in participation. But those aggregate figures can mask a lot of differences underneath the hood.” – Matthew Nestler (04:23)
• “Over the past couple of years… moms with young children under five, there's been a decline in employment, but also of participation.” – Matthew Nestler (05:18)
• “Many women… said, I can't do this. It's too hard with my kids or with my caregiving responsibilities... so they were quitting and taking a different job. And often that came with a pay cut.” – Harriet Tory (08:19)
• “At the high level... employment shares are at or near all time highs. That is a success story... but... specific groups... really struggling right now.” – Matthew Nestler (10:37)
• “There are also some structural difficulties that make it hard to balance [success] with family life.” – Harriet Tory (11:02)

---

Notable Segments and Timestamps

• COVID’s Impact on Women’s Employment: 02:25 – 03:12
• Rise and Pullback of Remote Work: 03:20 – 04:23
• Prime Working Age Women - Data Overview: 04:23 – 05:07
• Mothers of Young Children - Labor Trends: 05:07 – 06:42
• Barriers to Workforce Participation: 06:42 – 07:30
• Pay Gap Widening: 08:03 – 09:21
• Broader Economic Stakes: 09:21 – 10:29
• State of American Women (Summary Reflections): 10:29 – 12:08

---

Summary

The episode paints a nuanced portrait of life for American women in 2026: highly educated, increasingly present in high-profile roles, but challenged by structural forces such as uneven caregiving burdens, inadequate childcare support, and the return to inflexible work schedules. While headline numbers look promising, many groups of women (particularly mothers and women of color) are strained, and the overall gender pay gap is widening. The experts underscore that enhancing women’s participation is critical not only for gender equality, but for the sustainability of the U.S. economy itself, given demographic and policy headwinds.

---

Transcript

[A]

Trading at Schwab is now powered by Ameritrade, bringing you an expanding library of education with even more ways to sharpen your trading skills. Access new online courses, insightful webcasts, articles, engaging videos, and more, all curated just for traders. Plus guided learning paths with content designed to fit your unique interests. No sifting to find exactly what you need so you can spend your time learning to trade brilliantly. Learn [e-mail] trading hey, what's news, listeners?

[B]

It's Sunday, March 15th. I'm Alex Osola for the Wall Street Journal. This is what's News Sunday, the show where we tackle the big questions about the biggest stories in the news by reaching out to our colleagues across the newsroom to help explain what's happening in our world on today's show. It may be Women's History Month, but today we're not just looking back. How are American women, from the C Suite to childcare, actually doing professionally and economically in 2026? There's little doubt that women have made great strides in the past few decades. Women are holding more managerial roles or top jobs at companies than in the past. They're also more likely to have a college degree. That's been the case for a few years now. According to McKinsey, women now control about a third of all retail financial assets in the US and that's expected to rise to between 40 and 45% by 2030. But underneath all these data points, the reality for many individual women is a bit more complicated. The pay gap between men and women keeps getting wider, particularly so for black and Hispanic women. Parents of young children are seeing the costs of childcare skyrocket. A 2025 survey by Care.com found that families in the US spent an average of 22% of their household income on childcare alone. A rollback of DEI policies means S&P 500 companies are appointing fewer women and people of color. To get a sense of what's driving these trends and how women are actually doing as a whole, I spoke with WSJ economics reporter Harriet Tory and Matthew Nestler, senior economist at professional services firm kpmg. Let's go back for a second to the COVID 19 pandemic. I remember all these headlines at the time that women were leaving their jobs. Harriet, why did the pandemic hit women particularly hard?

[C]

I think caregiving is really the answer to that question. During the pandemic, we saw everything shut down, schools went to remote learning, and it was just a really tough time for so many families to juggle Both of them. And just by default, a lot of women just didn't have the time or the bandwidth to try and stay in the labor force. A lot of women left the labor force and it took time for them to come back. I mean, there are definitely some benefits from the pandemic. We saw this very big adjustment to remote working. It became so much more normalized to have a remote job. And there are many women out there who have profited from that and who have found a better work life balance from being able to work from home and to have that flexibility over their schedules. But certainly in initially in the pandemic, when the economy shut down, it was really tough for families to balance caregiving duties and work.

[B]

Matthew Women is a big group, of course. Have we seen the employment in certain groups affected more than others?

[D]

So post Covid, there's been a bit of a whiplash where there was that decline and then there was a sharp increase. And what my research is focused on is that over the past couple of years some of that has started to decline again. And we saw both the higher highs and lower lows, in particular among those with a college education who benefited disproportionately from the expansion of remote work, flexible work arrangements. And that is one of the main reasons now over the past couple of years there's been a sharper decline, is as that has start to be pulled back a little bit.

[B]

You both beat me to talking about where we are right now. The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the labor force participation rate for women in January of this year was 57.5%. That's down just a bit from the 58% before the pandemic in February 2020. You talked about hybrid schedules, the change to the return to office that's now having an impact. How about some of the industries in particular that are maybe driving this?

[D]

Economists often talk about the difference between the overall participation rate, which to some degree is based on the aging population. We would expect that to decline somewhat. If you look at women in prime working age, so 25 to 54, January actually hit an all time high in participation. But those aggregate figures can mask a lot of differences underneath the hood. And that's where we've seen some of those declines. We've seen them pop up in a lot of different industries. They're in healthcare, education, but in other industries there have been some gains in information and manufacturing as well. Industries, you might not necessarily think to the same degree for this specific group of prime age women with young Children.

[B]

I know you recently came out with a report about these mothers of young children, how they've started returning to the workforce. What were some of the most interesting findings from that report?

[D]

One of the interesting findings was that over the past couple of years, that particular group, moms with young children under five, there's been a decline in employment, but also of participation. And that is different from the past two cycles during COVID and during the financial crisis, where employment fell for this group but participation did not because unemployment rose. So a quick side definition. If over the past four weeks you have looked for a job, you are classified as unemployed and thus in the labor market. And so that has been one of the striking differences how this has happened, A outside of a formal recession, but that B, we've seen this decline in participation now coming back forward all the way to today. Over the past six months, we've seen a little bit of increase in participation, but a lot of that has been driven by active job search or an increase in unemployment. We're seeing people move a little bit between employment, maybe to out of the labor force, then they're looking for a job, maybe they get a job. What we don't know is moving forward, given some of the structural constraints for this group, the degree to which they will be able to have employment and keep it, or whether we'll continue to see the shuffling in and out from employment, out of the labor force into into active job search and et cetera.

[B]

Harriet, hopping over to you for a sec. What are some of the factors that are still keeping women out of the workforce?

[C]

Overall, the labor market is just not that great for everybody, men and women. It's just quite a difficult time if you're looking for a job. What we saw when we came out of the pandemic was that there were very acute worker shortages. So for a couple of years, the labor market was extremely hot. Wage growth was through the roof. If you wanted a job, it was really easy to find one. And you could probably get a nice hefty wage increase to go with it. But we have seen a sharp cooling since then. The labor market has come down from this high and now people are reporting it's much harder to find a job. We've seen people perhaps spending longer trying to find a job. And it is just harder if you're on the sidelines, to break back in. We are hearing this a lot coming up.

[B]

How women are doing matters for more than just women. It could show how the economy is doing overall. That's after the break.

[E]

This is A new era of American Innovation Drive Health used Google AI to develop an AI powered AgentIP nurse that provides real time support to patients 24. 7 Learn more at G coamericaninnovation.

[B]

Harriet, you mentioned pay, and that's of course something that comes up a lot in conversations around gender equality. You wrote a few months ago about how last year women working full time made 81 cents on the dollar compared to men, which is the widest pay gap since 2016. What's driving that expansion?

[C]

There are various theories for what might be going on. We did see in 2024 and also 2023 this widening in the gender pay gap. And of course that was as the labor market started to cool. 2022 was really the very, very hot year. And then we saw on that front, and what we think might be a factor, is that companies started calling people back to the office. And as we said before, workers did win a lot of remote work flexibility during the pandemic. And many people, especially those of parents with young children or people who have other caregiving responsibilities, do find that not having to commute just add an enormous amount of very valuable time to your schedule. But as people were being called back into the office, many women that I spoke to for the story went through this and just said, I can't do this. It's too hard with my kids or with my caregiving responsibilities. Even people without kids just say it's too much and it's not worth it. So they were quitting and taking a different job. And often that came with a pay cut. But many workers decided it was worth it to be able to preserve that flexibility in their lives.

[B]

I want to talk a little bit about the stakes. How much of an impact really does women's employment, women's pay, have on the overall economy, on the overall labor market?

[D]

This is all happening within the context of two major trends. One, the aging population that is increasingly retiring, and two, the shift to a more restrictive immigration policy, both of which is putting downward pressure on the number of workers of labor supply. And so within that context, moving forward, every employer is likely to face some challenges attracting and retaining workers. So this is a major issue not only today, but moving forward in terms of employers being able to attract and retain that top talent. And I would also add, in addition to the child care side, there's also the other side of the care life cycle, which is elder care. And a lot of women in particular, especially Gen X and older, are providing unpaid elder care, which is another constraint on the ability to choose to work and how they work. And so I do view these as central workforce, business and economic issues today. And moving forward, if I were to

[B]

meet you at a kid's birthday party, let's say, and I were to ask you, what is the state of the American woman like, the economic state, what would you say?

[D]

It's a story of divergence, the high level, the aggregate participation rate among prime age women, employment shares are at or near all time highs. That is a success story to a certain degree, but that does mask a lot of differences among specific groups. And so if everyone is not doing well, that means that we still have a lot of work to do and that's where this specific group is really struggling right now.

[C]

Yeah, I would agree with that. American women are more educated than ever before. So in many ways women are in a very strong position to succeed in their careers. But there are certain structural issues that are just difficult and hard to overcome and that women tend to just bear the burden of more profoundly things like childcare and elder care. So I think a lot of people are struggling to make it work. We have seen extremely high inflation over the past few years, which has really made it hard for families to pay for things like care services that they might need. It's not easy. And this is also an economy that doesn't have the levels of state support that perhaps other developed economies do. You know, many countries in Europe subsidize childcare to a high degree because they see it as important economic infrastructure. Certain states do more than others in the US but it's definitely not the case that you have nationwide childcare infrastructure or anything like that. There are a lot of ways in which American women are poised to be extremely successful and achieve a great deal in the economy. But there are also some structural difficulties that make it hard to balance that with family life.

[B]

Matthew Nestler, Harriet, Tory, thank you both so much for joining me.

[C]

Thank you.

[D]

Thanks so much.

[B]

And that's it for what's new Sunday for March 15th. Today's show was produced by Pierre Biennime with supervising producer Melanie Roy. I'm Alex Osola and we'll be back tomorrow morning with a brand new show. Until then, thanks for listening.

[E]

This podcast is brought to you by reliaQuest. Cybercriminals are constantly attacking. They want your data, they want your identity, they want your innovation. ReliaQuest AI detects, contains and eliminates cyber threats faster. It helps your security teams move faster at the work that matters most to protect the business now and delivers insights to help them Predict what's next ReliaQuest AI powered cybersecurity. Learn more at reliaquest.com that's R E L I a Q u e s t Com.