Let’s stop polarizing women’s choices about work and family

Young women are being pulled to extremes today over their choices about marriage, family and work. Will you be a career climber or tradwife? Lean in or dip out? 

This is a false choice. Unlike the two-team sport of politics, today’s dynamic workforce offers an array of flexible opportunities for women to navigate the roles and demands of life. The government’s role should not be to choose which path is best, but to remove the stumbling blocks to the choices women need or desire.

Today, most adult women work. Some 77 million women ages 20 and older are in the civilian labor force (58.3%), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The 55 million women not in the workforce may have left (or never entered) for many reasons, including choosing to be stay-at-home wives and mothers, due to a disability, or retirement.

Recently, we’ve seen a decline in employment and labor force participation of working women. One analysis found that 212,000 women left the workforce since the beginning of 2025, and the labor force participation rate for women ages 25 to 44 living with a child under five fell from 69.7% to 66.9%. It’s chalked up to the end of remote and hybrid work options and the difficulty of finding affordable childcare. Some blame the MAGA movement. 

Before we sound the alarm, let’s realize that the news is not as discouraging as some might manipulate us into thinking.

Women have long cycled in and out of the workforce

First, isolating a few months of data misses the important point that women regularly cycle in and out of the workforce. This is not the first or worst decline in women’s labor force participation; that title belongs to COVID-19. Aside from the pandemic, women’s labor force participation has dipped and spiked many times, often within a half percentage point. In fact, in July, their labor force participation rate ticked back up 0.1%.

Furthermore, the downward trend in labor force participation that began after peaking above 60% in 2000 had started to reverse in the latter Obama years and most of Trump 1.0.

Second, government data is not fully capturing the ways that women balance work and motherhood. Somewhere between stay-at-home moms and ladder climbers are freelancers. From full-time self-employment to side hustles and gig work, an estimated 73 million people earn incomes outside of traditional work. However, U.S. employment data undercounts flexible workers by millions.

According to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the primary surveys used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Current Employment Survey and the Current Population Survey, are not fully capturing these flexible roles. This is a good case for fresh eyes at the Bureau of Labor Statistics to develop new methods that capture and report data on independent contractors. 

Women want flexibility in different phases of their lives. Gen Z demands it now. Even if some women are leaving the 9-to-5, that does not mean they’ve left careers or gainful work. 

Self-employment, freelance and gig work are here to stay. Some 42% of the 73 million freelancers in 2023 were women. Notably, the vast majority of these independents worked either occasionally or part-time, not full-time. In the gig economy, specifically, 68% of gig workers used platforms for a side job, compared to 31% who used them for primary work. 

Women need flexibility while raising families

Many women work independently to balance earning income with raising children, caregiving for aging parents, and managing their health issues. Nine out of 10 female workers who shifted from full-time employment to independent contract work said they did so to prioritize flexibility over stability.

Childcare is costly and may prohibit some women from traditional jobs. If a mother chooses to become a stay-at-home mom, that’s often a good decision for her family, not a consolation prize. However, many women are working flexibly while raising families.

The left is busy working against women’s flexibility. Union-backed policymakers seeking to boost labor unions are actively attempting to reclassify independent contractors as employees to then unionize them. The sinister Protecting the Right to Organize Act and the Biden administration’s Department of Labor 2024 rules would have effectively reclassified independent contractors nationwide. These liberal policies force women into traditional jobs against their will.

California, under Gov. Gavin Newsom, enacted foolish reclassification legislation (Assembly Bill 5 or AB5). AB5 destroyed the livelihoods of 10.5% of self-employed Californians and plunged overall employment by 4.4% across over 600 occupations, according to Freelancers Against AB5. Entire professions dominated by women, such as transcribers, were wiped out. Now, other states like New Jersey are copycatting these policies. This is a disastrous labor policy, especially for women.

Policymakers can be pro-women, pro-worker and pro-Gen Z by protecting flexible work. Congress can codify a simpler, clearer definition of independent contractor status under federal law that makes it easier to remain independent. The Employee Rights Act and Modern Worker Empowerment Act do just that. States should reject California’s model and embrace worker freedom.

As a society, let’s end the debate over stay-at-home moms and career women. Flexibility gives women the ability to choose what’s best for their unique situations at any stage of life, no matter what they value most.