The workplace is broken

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"That math has got to be wrong," I said to myself.

It wasn’t.
It was just…depressing.

The Inflow Story (2021-2024): When Work Got (Barely) Better

Between January 2021 and late 2024, something extraordinary happened:

• ‘Prime-age’ (aka ages 25–54) women's labor force participation jumped 3.5 percentage points

• That’s nearly double the gain for men

• By early 2024, 1.8 million more women were in the US workforce compared with 2019.

What made it possible? Flexible work finally - barely - bent just enough to accommodate caregiving.

Remote options, slightly better pay, and a skosh of flexibility…and women surged into the workforce at historic rates.

Translation:
Women didn’t suddenly become more ambitious.
Work finally stopped being impossible.

The Outflow Conundrum (2025): That Time When the Floor Dropped Out

Then came 2025.

Between January and mid-year:

• 212,000 to 455,000 women ages 20+ exited the U.S. workforce

• Tens of thousands of men entered.

• Moms of kids under 5 saw participation fall three full percentage points in just six months.

Why?
Flexible work vanished.
Childcare costs spiked.
Childcare availability shrank.

Women didn’t suddenly decide to return to 1950s gender norms.

The conditions that made work barely doable got wiped away as the pendulum of “work-from-anywhere” swung back to “work from this desk, right here, 5 days a week”. 

And so we made impossible choices with long-term consequences.

Then, the Backlash. And it’s Loud.

Just as women were being pushed out, the narrative flipped.

A November New York Times op-ed suggested "liberal feminism" ruined the workplace, and floated "conservative feminism" (read: more traditional roles, different expectations) as a fix.

Their implication?
The root cause of what’s broken at work…is women.
Our ambition. Our need for flexibility. Our insistence on work that doesn’t break us.

Let’s Be Clear

As Reshma Saujani put it,
"No, women didn't ruin the workplace. We just demand it be fixed."

Companies that hand out wellness apps and fertility benefits while keeping workloads, hours, and expectations that make thriving (or even staying) impossible.

The internet wants you to pick a side: trad wife or boss babe. 

I call BS.

Most of us are just trying to build lives where we can work (if that’s our desire), care, and not burn out while doing it.

The real "villain" isn't women, or our ambition.
It's a workplace and policy playbook that refuses to align with reality.

Ambition

So some a lot of us left. 

After years building someone else's empire…we hit the burnout wall (or the layoff wave, or the impossible choice between career and caregiving). We decided to build life on our own terms, and sometimes our own empire.

Our own table.
Our own pace.
Our own rules.

And we discovered something absolutely maddening:
The system is just as broken on the other side of the exit door.

The Founder Explosion & What’s Driving It

Five years ago, women accounted for only 29% of new U.S. businesses.
Today we start roughly 49% of them - a 69% increase.

That's not a retreat from ambition.
That's women refusing to keep subsidizing broken systems with our health.

And Yet…the Money Didn’t Follow

All-female founding teams still get only 1-2% of U.S. venture capital.
2024 marked our lowest funding share in five years. 

Meanwhile:
Women-founded startups generate 78 cents of revenue per dollar invested
Male-founded startups generate 31 cents.

Let me say that again, clearly:
We outperform - profoundly - and still get a teensy fraction of the capital.

And the safety net? Practically Nonexistent.

Women founders launch into a landscape with:

• No guaranteed paid family or medical leave.

• Health insurance that’s tied to a spouse or an overpriced individual plan

• A childcare system collapsing in real time

• Higher unpaid care responsibilities outside of work

• Thinner personal financial cushions due to wage gaps

Any normal life happenstance - a sick kid, a medical issue, a childcare breakdown - can derail both the founder and the business.

So where does that leave us?

Stay in corporate →
RTO, burnout, AI disruption, and watching other women exit around you

Leave to build your own thing →
2% of VC funding, no safety net, still outperforming on every metric

All while being told we’re the problem.

It’s not about picking the "right" path.
Both paths are rigged.

What we're actually building toward isn't "stay" or "go."
It’s the demand for infrastructure that makes either viable.

The New Ambition isn’t trad wife vs. boss babe.
It’s success that doesn't cost everything - wherever we choose to build it.

Because the system could support that vision.
It just doesn’t … yet.

Quick favor: If this hit you in the gut, forward it to one woman who’s carrying too much alone. We change the system faster when more of us see the full picture.

GO | DO

This week, it’s not about you. It’s about all of us.
Here are 3 low-ish lift ways to advocate for the change we all deserve:

What’s In It For All Of Us

Every day we don’t fix this, our kids learn one thing:
Work and family don’t mix.

And every woman who leaves because the system made it impossible…
makes it harder for the next one to stay.

These exits don’t just add up — they compound.

Resilience won’t create paid leave.
It won’t fund women-led startups.
It won’t stop RTO from pushing moms out.

The problem was never women.
And it’s not ambition, either.
The problem is a workplace that doesn’t work for the workers.

So how will we drive change?
Seeing the full picture.
Naming the friction.
Refusing to handle it alone.

That’s when we stop pretending the table isn’t wobbling…
and start demanding a new one.

And to the women navigating perimenopause and menopause in workplaces that still won’t name it… I see you. We’re going there next.

Get In There

• 🔰 HERE’S YOUR SHOT TO BE A BIG TIME MOVIE PRODUCER (FOR GOOD) A Giving Tuesday opportunity to put your money where your values are. Moms First is creating a documentary about American motherhood.
  Your donation gets you an Associate Producer credit. You can also sign up to host a Summer screening.

• I wrote earlier this week about how to support women in your network, and the comments section gave me hope. Read, comment, and share with your network.