I’ll start with a confession: I am one of the lucky ones. And I mean that in the most literal sense.

After the birth of my second child, I left my full-time, in-person job at an ad agency. This was before the pandemic, and approaching my supervisors about working from home felt downright scandalous. Weighing all angles, the math wasn’t mathing, so my husband and I decided it would be best for me to stay home for the time being.

I was home with two toddlers, deeply grateful but also quietly anxious, trying to figure out how, or even when, I could ever make it back into the workplace. The logistics alone felt impossible. Two little kids, no predictable schedule, and a career that felt like it was slipping further away with every passing month.

Then one afternoon, I happened to be out to lunch with some old friends, including Stefanie Beach. We were just catching up. She was just starting her own business, venturing out as an entrepreneur. I was somewhere between contemplating my future and trying not to spiral about it. And before the end of the meal, she looked at me with a sly smile and said: “Steph, I might have an interesting opportunity for you.”

Right place. Right time. Right person.

That conversation changed everything. Stefanie is now my boss, and the job she offered me was remote, and flexible at that. Which means that today, I get to be the kind of mother I always wanted to be. I now have three children (and a dog) and I’m there for school drop-off and pick-up. I make it to the class performances and the teacher conferences. When my kids are sick, I’m home. When homework gets hard, I’m at the table. I can shuffle them to this practice and that practice and doctor’s appointments and still close my laptop having done good work that day.

That’s not a small thing. For me, it’s everything.

But as I watch the return-to-office wave sweep through corporate America, I keep thinking about all the women who don’t have what I have. The ones who were told their flexibility was over. The ones who did the math and realized it didn’t add up anymore. The ones who left not because they wanted to, but because they had no other choice.

The numbers tell a painful story

Between January and August 2025, over 455,000 women exited the U.S. workforce, the largest drop since the pandemic. In that same window, 44,000 men joined it.

KPMG found that labor participation among college-educated mothers with young children fell nearly three percentage points in just a few months, erasing years of hard-won progress. And in a survey by Upwork and Workplace Intelligence, nearly two-thirds of C-suite leaders admitted they’d watched women resign specifically because of RTO policies. They saw it happening. They just didn’t stop it.

“Women are not opting out. They’re being torn between caregiving responsibilities and the rigid way we continue to do work.” — Sheila Brassel, Catalyst

Why it falls hardest on us

Here’s the reality that anyone juggling a career and a family already knows: the logistics of parenthood are a finely tuned system. Childcare pickups, school schedules, sick days, activities… it all runs on a very tight clock. Remote work didn’t just make that easier. For a lot of women, it made it possible.

Mothers still do more than twice the unpaid caregiving that fathers do. Trust me – I know there are plenty of amazing dads out there who do more than their fair share, so don’t come at me. But when an RTO mandate drops into that general caregiving equation, it’s not a minor inconvenience. It’s a crisis. Catalyst found that 42% of women who voluntarily quit in 2025 cited caregiving as their primary reason. Inflexible office requirements were a central driver.

And for women who stay and make it work? There’s still proximity bias to contend with. The quiet, persistent tendency to reward the people who are most visible in the office. Women managing school runs and sick kids are already at a disadvantage before a single performance review.

This is a business problem too

A study of over 3 million employment records across 54 S&P 500 companies found that RTO mandates drove a 12%+ spike in turnover among women, nearly three times the rate of their male colleagues. Job vacancies took 23% longer to fill. Almost a third of companies struggled to hire at all.

BCG research shows diverse leadership teams generate 19% higher revenue, and companies prioritizing gender parity are 21% more likely to be profitable. When RTO pushes women out, especially mid-career women who are often the most experienced and capable people in the room, it’s not just a loss for them. It’s a loss for the whole organization.

What I hope leaders take from this

I write this with real gratitude for my own situation, and real concern for everyone who doesn’t share it. Flexibility shouldn’t be a privilege reserved for the few. It should be a baseline.

If you have any influence over workplace policy, here’s what I’d gently ask:

• Ask what problem a mandatory return is actually solving. Is in-person presence the answer, or just the most familiar one?
• Look at your attrition data by gender. Are women leaving your company at higher rates since RTO? Most leaders don’t know because they haven’t looked.
• Treat caregiving support as a retention strategy, not a wellness perk. Backup childcare and flexible scheduling keep talented people in the room.
• Train managers on proximity bias. The best employee isn’t always the most visible one.

This International Women’s Month, I’m celebrating the fact that I get to do work I enjoy and still be the mom I always wanted to be. But I’m also holding space for every woman who had to choose between the two, and for the workplaces that made that choice necessary.

We can do better. I genuinely believe that. And the data shows it’s worth it.

Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics • KPMG • Catalyst • Upwork & Workplace Intelligence • BCG • Baylor University / Hankamer School of Business