Curb the Pandemic-Driven Exodus of Working Women

Prior to the pandemic, women made up a little more than half of the US workforce, and representation of women in senior roles had been experiencing slow but steady progress. In fact, at the beginning of 2020, women comprised 28 percent of senior vice president roles and held 21 percent of C-suite positions in the US, according to Women in the Workplace 2020, a McKinsey study conducted in partnership with LeanIn.Org. Women were making incremental cracks in the proverbial glass ceiling, and the numbers were trending in the right direction—that is, until the COVID-19 pandemic upended the business world and ushered a blow to the US labor market, the likes of which Americans have never seen before.