For decades, the gender wage gap has slowly narrowed, but from 2023 to 2025, it showed a concerning reversal. According to new Census Bureau data, women earned 80.9 cents for every dollar men made in 2024, down from around 84 cents in 2022.
Credit for closing the gap has been messy and uneven, but the recent widening is raising alarms because it’s the first time since the 1960s that the gap has grown in consecutive years.
So what’s behind this reversal? What does it mean for women (especially younger ones) and their financial path?
Pushback from Return-to-Office Mandates
One factor that’s been getting attention is companies demanding employees return to the office full-time. These “RTO mandates” seem to disproportionately impact women for a few reasons:
- Higher turnover among women: In large tech and financial firms rolling out stricter in-office policies, women left at nearly 3x the rate of men, often because returning full-time clashed with caregiving responsibilities and logistical challenges
- Lower-level reentry: Many women who leave roles with more burdens return to jobs with lower pay or prestige just to get more flexibility
- Office bias: Companies pushing for “in-office culture” imply that those who are remote or want flexibility are “less committed” to the job. Since there’s already gendered pressure on caregiving, this gap works against women.
When offices re-emerged after the pandemic, many saw in-person as “normal,” but not everyone has equal access to that normal. The result is that women accept pay cuts or roles that suit hybrid or remote schedules, and that drags down aggregate statistics.
The Motherhood Penalty, Child Care, & Stuck Careers
This isn’t new, but the motherhood penalty is showing its fangs again in 2025:
- When childcare is expensive, not accessible, or unreliable, women often drop hours or step out of the workforce entirely. That means time periods without pay, missed promotions, or delayed raises.
- Over a lifetime, this can cost women hundreds of thousands in wages and retirement savings. The U.S. Department of Labor and other studies estimate that cumulative losses are huge.
- Even in jobs with similar titles, women often get fewer raises, especially after returning from maternity leave or caregiving breaks.
When women re-enter, sometimes the only opportunity is a lower rung than where they left off, so their (corporate) ladder climb restarts. That compounds the loss over the years.
Structural Factors & Why It’s Hard to Fix Quickly
The reversal isn’t just from one cause, though. It’s a complicated tangle.
- Occupational segregation: Women still dominate lower-paying sectors like retail, caregiving, and education, while men are overrepresented in higher sectors like tech, engineering, or executive roles.
- Hiring shifts post-COVID: There was a hiring boom in male-skewed industries, which further tips the median earnings comparison
- Bias in promotions and pay raises: Even when women perform equally, they sometimes receive smaller raises or slower promotions
- Resiliences vs. flexibility: Women may prioritize flexibility or job satisfaction if the system punishes them for choosing otherwise.
And now, with more companies pushing stricter in-office policies when the remote experiment proved viable, that structural weight presses harder.
What Younger Women Can Do (and What Needs to Change)
What you can control:
- Negotiate aggressively. Always ask for pay reviews, even in flexible or remote roles.
- Track your promotion/raises. Don’t accept silence. Document your impact and ask for adjustments.
- Explore remote-first companies or flexible-friendly employers. These roles can help preserve both growth and work-life balance.
- Build side income or equity. Freelance, invest, or build personal projects that don’t depend solely on your main employer’s policies.
- Plan for gaps. If caregiving or sabbaticals are in your future, plan ahead and save more. Choose benefits wisely and protect your career checkpoints.
What needs structural change: (will we see all in our lifetime?)
It’s time to rethink how we work. Ideally, employers should focus on results, not hours spent in the office, and we need affordable, universal child care so families don’t have to choose between work and home. Equal pay and transparency shouldn’t be optional either. And most importantly, we’ve got to change the culture so working flexibly or remotely doesn’t make anyone seem less committed.
The Money Move
Even in 2025, women are still earning less than men, and the gap is getting wider again. A big reason is companies forcing workers back into the office, which hits women harder because of childcare, flexibility, and bias around “face time.”
For Millennials and Gen Z, for every pay raise you don’t ask for, or a job you take for flexibility over pay, it adds up over time. Know what you’re worth, speak up for it, and look for companies that value results, not just someone who’s sitting at their desk the longest!
This topic first appeared in The Washington Post
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