What’s The Why Behind The “Great Break-up?”

Women face more challenges, hurdles, and barriers in the workplace. They just do. It’s been demonstrated in study after study, decade after decade. We’re hired less, promoted less, judged and reviewed more critically, and subjected to unique stressors—harassment, misogyny, disproportionate homelife demands—that together make women less likely to remain in the workforce. All of those factors combined, and exacerbated by the pandemic, have hampered women’s strides toward workplace and economic equality. And they’ve critically hindered women’s post-pandemic job recovery, in largely predictable ways: job recovery picked up when people felt optimistic, only to slow to a crawl, at times even losing ground, each time the pandemic worsened, with gains largely in low-paying, public-facing retail and service positions.