For over a decade, I’ve tracked the research on women in leadership — how many women are in the workforce, what happens to us once we get into leadership, and how we succeed. For most of that decade, this meant getting to focus on good news. Women were making real inroads into senior roles. The business case for gender and racial diversity was piling up faster than anyone could rebut it. And the women in my coaching practice were regularly finding workarounds for unconscious bias that actually worked.
Since 2022, that positive story has been harder to tell. And in the last 12 months, there’s no question we’re in a major backslide.
This month we updated our Women in Leadership Guide — free, as always — with the most recent data. I found the process sobering, and I wrote about it on my Substack, where I sit with the harder question: does the environmental shift change the advice I give my coaching clients about how to think about gender equality?
Below are the lowlights we’ve now added to the guide. And one genuine highlight, because the picture is always complicated.
2026 TREND FAQS on Women in Leadership
1. Labor market reversal: are women leaving the workforce, or being pushed out?
The post-pandemic rebound in women’s workforce participation has reversed. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that in a single recent month, 91,000 women exited the labor force while 10,000 men joined. Across 2025, men entered the labor market at three times the rate of women — 572,000 men added, against 184,000 women. And in July, 2026, women made up 100% of the decline in the workforce.
Black women and working mothers are absorbing a disproportionate amount of this joblessness, with Black female unemployment rising to 7.3%. The drivers for women’s leaving stack on top of one another: childcare that averages $13,128 per child annually, widespread corporate DEI rollbacks, reduced flexible/remote work arrangements, and federal job cuts concentrated in agencies with high female representation (e.g., the Social Security Administration (66% female), USAID (59%), the EPA (54%).)
What it means: None of this reads in the data or in anecdotal evidence as women opting out. It reads as multiple supports being withdrawn at once, with female workforce participation following them out the door. Fewer women in the labor force stifles economic potential and widens both the gender and racial wealth gaps, which makes it an everyone problem, not a women problem.
2. Paid family leave: what happens when fathers actually take it?
Now some good news, and it is substantial. Where public policy has invested in paid family leave, domestic equity has moved — with meaningful short-term impact. In the 14 states and Washington, D.C. that have implemented public paid family leave programs, fathers are taking a near-equal share of bonding leave.
In New Jersey, male bonding claims expanded from 11% to 33%. California reached 50% parity. In Colorado and Washington, men account for the majority of bonding leave claims. Set that against the historical baseline: 75% of fathers once took no leave at all following a child’s birth.
The downstream effects are documented, too. When fathers take paid bonding leave, paternal mental health improves, parenting confidence increases, domestic responsibilities are shared more equitably, divorce rates can diminish, and maternal career retention and mental health both get vital support.
What it means: The constraint was never men’s willingness to spend time with newborns. It was the absence of a structure that made leave-taking normal and affordable. Public policy and cultural influencers both play a part in normalizing what a supportive family life looks like for women and men.
3. Remote work: has flexibility turned into a promotion penalty?
Flexible and remote work options originally enabled record female labor force participation, peaking in the pandemic. Then 25% of employers reduced or eliminated remote and hybrid options in 2025, and remote work under un-audited performance systems produced something new: a “Remote Work Promotion Penalty” that lands disproportionately on women and primary caregivers.
According to the latest Women in the Workplace data, only 37% of women working remotely three or more days per week were promoted over a two-year period, compared to 49% of women working onsite. Those numbers both look bad when we look at men’s experience. Men working remotely and onsite were promoted about the same: 54%.
What it means: Flexibility isn’t the culprit in this trend. Flexibility without objective performance criteria and audited promotion outcomes is. When nobody can see how promotion decisions actually get made, proximity and gender bias quietly substitute for evidence, and caregivers pay the difference. If you have a say in how your organization evaluates people, this is a good place to put your attention. If you don’t have influence, try anyway: ask how promotion decisions in your group get documented.
Photo by Kaboom Pics
4. The scrutiny gap: what does “underground” bias cost women in leadership?
A landmark 60-year Harvard study tracking executive perceptions finds that surface attitudes toward female executives have improved considerably, but also that bias has migrated underground — into informal sponsorship, subjective evaluation, and who gets access to P&L line roles.
This has generated a perception gap big enough to be a new kind of problem:
● Harsher scrutiny. 90% of female executive leaders report that women in executive roles are judged more critically than men. Among male executives, 35% see it that way.
● Prove-it-again bias. 83% of women believe they must be more exceptional than men to succeed, versus 28% of men— reflecting a system other research documents, where men tend to be promoted on expansive future potential while women are taxed with proving an unassailable past record.
● The meritocracy illusion. 76% of male executives believe their organization operates as a meritocracy. Only 40% of female executives agree.
What it means: We’ve gotten much better at not saying sexist things out loud, and not much better at the decisions underneath. That gap in how women and men understand gender bias is also why these conversations so often go sideways: the two genders are describing systems they genuinely experience differently, and both are reporting accurately. If you’re making the case for change, name the perception gap before you argue the merits. Otherwise, the perception gap will drive even more misalignment.
5. The ambition shift: are women less ambitious, or less supported?
For the first time in over a decade of tracking, a measurable gap in promotion ambition has opened between men and women: 80% of women are seeking promotion to the next level, compared to 86% of men.
Before anyone reaches for the leaning-out explanation, look at what’s going on underneath. Currently, 21% of companies place low or zero priority on advancing women, and only 50% treat it as a high priority. The sponsorship deficit is stark: only 31% of entry-level women receive executive sponsorship compared to 45% of entry-level men, and employees with sponsors are promoted at nearly twice the rate.
What it means: Women redirecting their ambition is a logical response to a rational reading of the odds, not a decline in drive. And it’s reversible. Research confirms that when women are provided equal sponsorship and organizational support, the ambition gap falls away.
2026 Summary: The Gender Gap is a Choice
Four of these five trends are moving the wrong way. The fifth tells us we can choose whether to keep the trends going. Paternity leave parity didn’t happen because a generation of men changed their minds; it happened because someone built the structure that made a different choice possible, and then men made different choices.
That’s the takeaway. Most of the current downward trend is sliding because supports were withdrawn — childcare, sponsorship, DEI infrastructure, flexible work options, audited promotion criteria. You can rebuild supports to create change. And you can rebuild them at any level: in your organization, on your team, in the sponsorship you extend to the woman two rungs below you.
Get the data. Know what you’re navigating. Do what you can to restore support to women in your sphere of influence. If nothing else, pass this information on to people with as much or more influence than you do.
Key sources
The Guide to Women in Leadership references over 100 individual sources underpinning the trends and data we highlight. These are the key sources we’ve added to this update, which, taken together with the over 100 sources we’ve already documented in the Guide, provide the backbone of evidence for the revised trendlines above.
● HBR: What 60 Years of Data Reveals About How Men and Women Experience Leadership (Whitten, Boswell, Oldroyd)
● The74: More Dads Are Taking Paid Paternity Leave
● LinkedIn News: The Leadership Pipeline for Women is Flashing a Warning
● Forbes: Women Made Up All the Job Losses Last Month. Here’s Why.
