Back to Normal Isn’t Good Enough

FIFTEEN MONTHS INTO THE COVID-19 pandemic, the statistics that reflect its toll on women’s employment continue to astonish. Women’s participation in the labor force has dropped to levels last seen in the 1980s. A May 2021 analysis from the National Women’s Law Center identified a net loss of 4.5 million jobs held by women since February 2020; nearly 2 million women have left the labor force altogether. And those sobering big-picture numbers obscure the outsized impact on women of color: The employment rate for Black and Hispanic women has taken a bigger hit than that of any other demographic group.

Early signs of the post-COVID recovery suggest the negative effect on women won’t disappear any time soon. Research by McKinsey suggests the employment recovery rate for women will lag men’s by a year and a half. Women who’ve