Women have made remarkable progress across the developed world over the past several decades, achieving higher levels of education and expanding their presence in traditionally high-paying professions. However, recent data suggest that this momentum may be slowing, with setbacks emerging in career advancement, workforce participation and pay equity.
Today, women outnumber men at universities in nearly every wealthy country. In the United States, their representation in high-income professions such as medicine and law has nearly tripled since 1980. In the United Kingdom, female doctors surpassed their male counterparts for the first time last year, according to the country’s General Medical Council.
Yet recent trends indicate that professional progress has begun to stall.
Executive Representation Declines
A 2024 study by S&P Global found that the share of women holding executive positions at the largest U.S. companies declined in 2023 for the first time after nearly two decades of continuous growth.
According to The Economist, women filled 38% of new board seats at S&P 500 companies in 2025, down from 42% the previous year, extending a decline from the peak reached in 2020.
The slowdown extends beyond corporate boardrooms. Across 33 OECD member countries, women’s participation in full-time employment fell from 78.1% in 2023 to 76.8% in 2024—the first decline since PwC began tracking the data 15 years ago.
In the United States, workforce participation among women aged 25 to 54 reached a record 78.5% in March but has since fallen by nearly one percentage point, a much steeper decline than that recorded among men.
Mothers Face the Biggest Setback
The decline has been particularly pronounced among college-educated American women with young children.
Their labor force participation began falling in 2023 after decades of steady improvement, with 2024 recording the largest annual decline for mothers of young children in the workforce in the past 40 years.
At the same time, the gender pay gap—which had been steadily narrowing—has widened again. In the United States, it increased in both 2023 and 2024, marking the first consecutive two-year deterioration in six decades. Pay gaps also widened during 2024 in several other developed countries, including Canada, France and Switzerland.
Career Ambitions Shift
The data also suggest that women’s career ambitions are no longer keeping pace with those of men.
An annual survey published in December 2025 by McKinsey and Lean In, the nonprofit founded by former Meta Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, found that while the share of both men and women seeking promotions rose between 2019 and 2023, the trend diverged afterward.
By 2025, nearly nine in 10 men expressed interest in moving up the corporate ladder, while the figure for women remained unchanged. Among women at the beginning of their careers, only 69% said they wanted a promotion.
PwC also found a persistent gap between men and women in their willingness to pursue higher positions or greater responsibilities.
Multiple Factors Behind the Slowdown
One possible explanation is the lingering statistical effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Labor economists note that during lockdowns, low-paid women were disproportionately likely to lose their jobs, temporarily narrowing the gender pay gap. Part of the recent widening may reflect those workers returning to the labor market. However, the fact that the gap continues to grow several years after the pandemic suggests other factors are also at work.
Access to childcare remains another significant obstacle. Although government subsidies have made childcare more affordable in some developed countries, shortages persist, resulting in long waiting lists and staffing problems.
Germany, for example, continues to face a shortage of more than 300,000 childcare places for children under the age of three, despite relatively affordable childcare services.
The article also points to changing political and corporate attitudes toward diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), particularly in parts of the United States. It notes that the federal government has rolled back DEI initiatives, while some companies have quietly scaled back similar policies, potentially affecting workplace opportunities for women.
