The pandemic didn't derail women's careers. It supercharged them.

How the pandemic supercharged their careers

2020 was a bad year for everyone, but it was especially tough for working women. The COVID-19 shutdowns led to mass layoffs in female-dominated sectors of the economy, from healthcare to hospitality, while school and daycare closings made it virtually impossible for mothers with young kids to hold on to their jobs. Millions of women were forced to drop out of the workforce. By 2021, as the economic recovery took hold, more than a million remained missing. The numbers were so alarming that commentators dubbed it a "she-cession." The pandemic, economists warned, might wipe out a generation of progress for working women.

But instead, the opposite happened: Women came roaring back to the workforce in record numbers. By early this year, their ranks had returned to pre-pandemic levels. Today, 77.8% of women between the ages of 25 and 54 are in the labor force, surpassing the previous peak in 2000. The pandemic didn't impair women's careers. It supercharged them.

The surge has been aided by a strong economic recovery. But it isn't just that. Even during a boom time for job seekers, men have not returned to work in the same numbers as women. And the biggest gains, surprisingly, have been among women in their 30s — the age when college-educated women often start having kids, prompting them to scale back or quit their jobs. 

That points to a major reason driving the surge in female employment: the work-from-home revolution. The increased availability of remote and hybrid roles for professional women has made it possible for young mothers to hold demanding jobs while raising their kids. According to Aaron Terrazas, the chief economist at Glassdoor, work from home has been such a game changer that it may have expanded the labor force by as many as 1.3 million women. "That's on par with roughly a year's worth of immigration," Terrazas says. "This was a magic gift for labor supply." Thanks to remote work, the future of employment could turn out to be female.

During the 20th century, the share of women in the American workforce rose steadily, aided by changing gender norms, antidiscrimination laws, access to higher education, and the pill. But around 2000, that century of progress ground to a halt, and it's not entirely clear why. Some point to the growing time demands of elite positions in professions like law and banking, which shut women with children out of the most lucrative jobs. Others point to the soaring cost of childcare. But one thing is undisputed: The stall-out was unique to the United States. In other developed economies — those that mandate parental leave, access to childcare, and the right to work part time — women's share of jobs continued to rise. In 1991, female participation in the US workforce was on par with that of France, Germany, and the UK. By 2019, it was at least 5 percentage points lower.

It was on the tail end of those two decades of stagnation when COVID struck. Recessions typically hit men harder. But this time, the downturn came disproportionately for sectors that employ high shares of women. In 2020, over the course of just two months, 2.2 million women dropped out of the workforce, compared with 1.7 million men. And repeated school and daycare closings threatened to prolong their time without employment, which would make it harder for them to find a job when they finally managed to return to work. "Pandemic Could Scar a Generation of Working Mothers," The New York Times reported. The grim headlines piled up.

Then remote work transformed the job market. Workforce participation among women in their 30s was more than a percentage point higher last quarter than it was at the beginning of 2020. "The most obvious explanation is that remote work expanded possibilities for this group that would not have been there otherwise," Terrazas says. "In those core family-raising, childbearing years, prior generations of women may have felt it necessary to leave the labor force. Remote work allowed many of them to stay in the labor force." That, in turn, means they'll have a better shot at promotions as they get further into their careers, bolstering the ranks of female executives and improving women's earning potential. The flexibility provided by remote work, in other words, could pay dividends for women for years to come.

Those gains, however, could be undercut by a new development: corporate America's push to force employees to return to the office. Across the economy, the share of remote and hybrid postings on job-search sites like Indeed has declined in recent months. Without the flexibility of work from home, many women with children could be forced to give up their jobs. And those who do manage to find remote work could pay a steep penalty for shunning the office.

Companies often pay less for remote roles, and bosses tend to reward the employees they see in the office every day with more favorable assignments, raises, and promotions. That's a big problem for working mothers, because they're often forced to take on more of the childcare responsibilities than their husbands, which means they're far less able than men to accept office work. Last year, 41% of women worked from home — compared with only 28% of men. If that trend continues, we could wind up creating a two-tier workforce in which women work from home in lower-paid, dead-end roles while men come into the office for higher-paid, management-track positions.

So remote work is good for women, because it's bringing more of them into the workforce. But it could simultaneously end up being bad for women, if it winds up reinforcing the glass ceiling. "The thing that increases female labor-force participation may not be the thing that reduces the gender pay gap," says Marianne Bertrand, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. "Being in the workforce and succeeding in the workforce aren't always the same thing."

So: What could keep remote work from becoming, in the words of the legal scholar Joan Williams, a "feminized ghetto"? For starters, the government needs to follow the lead of other developed countries and ensure access to better and more affordable day care, which would enable women to take higher-paid office jobs. And companies need to train managers to more effectively supervise remote employees, to ensure they're given the same opportunities for advancement as those who work in the office. The work-from-home revolution could prove to be one the biggest victories for gender equality since women won the right to vote a century ago — but only if we implement policies to make remote work a step forward rather than a sidetrack.

"The gains in female labor-force participation are remarkable when you think about where we were just a couple years ago," says Rose Khattar, the director of economic analysis at the Center for American Progress. "But we have to continue to fight to ensure that these gains aren't temporary."

Aki Ito is a senior correspondent at Insider.