Woman working on laptop with young child next to her
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For women at work, there is still ground to make up.
The pandemic disrupted their position in the labor force. In 2020, the share of women working in the U.S fell to 56.2%—its lowest rate since 1987—compared to 67.7% for men. But in the years that followed, something shifted.
Women returned to the workforce in strong numbers. Seventy-nine million U.S. women were employed in 2024, surpassing pre-pandemic numbers by two million. Mothers’ labor force participation also recovered. Moreover, women’s presence increased in traditionally male-dominated sectors like transportation and construction.
Then came the return-to-office mandates. The quiet rollback of flexible scheduling. And the “productivity concerns” subtly reframed as “culture-building.” The impact of these moves has been clear: since January 2025, more than 455,000 women in the U.S. have left their jobs.
A new report from Indeed’s Hiring Lab draws on a survey of more than 80,000 workers across eight countries to reveal exactly what’s at stake for women at work.
The findings are hard to ignore.
Women value flexibility more than men, and the gap isn’t subtle. In the U.S., women chose remote work as a top valued benefit at an 11-percentage point higher rate than men. They also prioritized flexible hours by seven points and childcare assistance by three.
This isn’t just a preference—it reflects a reality for many female workers. Women still perform the majority of unpaid care work in every country surveyed—and their desired work benefits reflect this unequal burden of domestic responsibilities.
At the same time, flexible opportunities are shrinking.
The share of postings advertising flexible scheduling peaked at 14.4% in late 2023, but has since declined to 13.7%. Some countries have it worse than others: France dropped from 10.5% to 4.6% and the U.K. fell from 11.3% to 7.5%.
Additionally, remote and hybrid postings—which surged after the pandemic—have flatlined or declined in countries including Australia, Germany and France.
This isn’t a correction. It’s a retreat from the policies that helped women rejoin the workforce—and it's happening while women’s labor participation is still fragile.
The case against flexibility is almost always framed as a productivity issue. But the data doesn’t support it.
In fact, hybrid workers are just as productive as fully in-office workers. Their performance reviews, promotion rates and overall task completion are not meaningfully impacted by where they work. At the same time, they report higher job satisfaction and lower turnover.
There’s also the irony of these flexibility pullbacks. Companies often cite “collaboration” and “culture” in return-to-office announcements, but the workers they’re most likely to lose—women and caregivers—are often experienced and high-performing as well as expensive to replace, for individual companies and the economy at large.
Workers are also clear about what flexibility is worth to them. Forty percent of U.S. workers say they’d give up at least 5% of their salary to keep remote work. But that framing misses the point. Flexibility shouldn’t be a perk—it should function as a core part of their compensation.
When companies frame flexibility as a gift they can take back, they misunderstand what they’re actually managing: labor supply, retention and institutional knowledge.
Full flexibility rollbacks aren’t the way to go. More targeted strategies can preserve performance while keeping the talent pipeline open:
Not every job needs the same arrangement. Employees who work in R&D may need to be in office more than marketing, for example. Build a role-by-role framework rather than blanket RTO mandates.
The companies winning on retention are shifting to output-based performance management. If the work gets done well, where and when it happens shouldn’t matter.
Indeed's data makes clear that workers are filtering by factors like hybrid work. If you offer it, say so. You're leaving candidates on the table by not advertising these things.
Flexible hours matter as much as location. A parent who needs to do school pickup at 3 p.m. and log back on at 7 p.m. is not less productive. In fact, they're managing two demanding jobs simultaneously.
The report also calls out policies that incentivize men to take parental leave as a long-term lever for reducing the gender gap in flexibility demand altogether.
These approaches allow companies to maintain performance without shrinking their talent pool.
The companies that will win the next decade of recruiting and retention aren’t the ones with the nicest offices. They’re the ones who figured out that flexibility isn’t charity. It’s essential infrastructure.
Rolling it back isn’t a return to normal. It’s a backtrack against policies proven to expand workplace participation and improve retention. And significantly, it’s a choice to make your workforce smaller, less diverse and more expensive to maintain.
The data is clear. The question now is whether leadership is paying attention.
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