Women's History Month 2026: How the Workplace Has Changed for Women
Every year, Women's History Month gives me a reason to pause and sit with two very different feelings at the same time: I’m impressed with how far we’ve come and equally frustrated with what we are still up against.
When I started writing for Career Civility back in 2019, Women’s History month has become a time of reflection and a signpost for what I’ve been experiencing in my life and in my career over the years I've written aboutbuilding a career while building a family, aboutthe mental load women quietly carry into every meeting, every email, every performance review, and aboutwhat it actually looks like to communicate with confidence in workplaces that weren't always designed with us in mind.
This year, in preparation for a Women’s History Month workshop I am facilitating in Minnesota this month for women in the insurance and financial industry, I want to zoom out and look at the bigger picture, inclusive of what the workplace has actually looked like for women over the last 25 years, what has genuinely changed, and what (I believe) still needs to change.
And then, because my goal is to always I am provide tactical and tangible communication advice you can implement directly into your work day, I’m going to close with communication tools you can use.
Here we go!
At the turn of the millennium, women's labor force participation was near its all-time high…about 60% in 1999 if you can believe it. Women were showing up. We were working hard. We were proving, decade after decade, that we belonged in meetings just as much as at home. I find myself privileged to grow up with a working mom who showed me that both could exist at the same time. I almost took it for granted. She never contemplated (to my knowledge) whether she should take a step back from her career. She really set the tone for my ambition as I would later become a mom.
Since 2000, women's labor force participation has flattened and, at various points, declined. Today, women make up 47% of the U.S. labor force. That is still a significant number, but… not proportional to our population and a dip since the millennium. Just take one scroll on TikTok and you’ll see people yearning for being a “trad wife” and a stay at home mom (in this economy?! Is all I gotta say to that). I also found out that while women now make up the majority of workers in management and professional occupations coming in at 52.3%, only 33% of chief executives are women. And at the S&P 500 level? That number drops to just 9%. Talk about disproportionate.
It’s disconcerting that while women are showing up, fighting back, and earning our keep we are still not holding the majority of seats at the tables where decisions about our careers, our pay, and our futures are made.
Just take a look at the pay gap. In 2024, women working full-time earned 83 cents for every dollar men earned. Sigh. I also learned that twenty years ago, it was 71 cents. We've moved three cents in two decades. Double sigh.
Here’s where it gets maddening… on a typical weekday, working women (like myself) spend about four hours on caregiving and household tasks. That is nearly twice the time men spend on the same responsibilities. We are working full-time jobs. We are managing households. We are making decisions about dinner and doctor's appointments and school pickups and birthday presents and we are doing it all while being expected to show up to work sharp, ambitious, and, ideally, grateful.
So this year, during Women’s History Month I’m a career mom who has lived this reality, built a business inside it, and I’m here to help us navigate the challenging duality of our professional life and family life.
Here’s how you can use communication as your secret weapon to make change in the workplace and get ahead on your own terms.
Get comfortable communicating your value
Most women I work with are extraordinary at doing the work and terrible at talking about it. Whether we recognize it or not… there is a cultural reason for that. We are often socialized to stay quiet, defer, and let the work speak for itself. But in most organizations, the work does not speak for itself. The people who get promoted are the people who are visible. That visibility starts with how you communicate.
Try this in your next one-on-one with your manager: instead of walking in with a task list, walk in with a value summary.
"Here are some success metrics from this last week. We closed the Henderson account, which we'd been working on for six weeks. I also restructured the onboarding process for the new team hires, which should cut ramp-up time by about two weeks per person. What else is coming up I need to be aware of”
That is communication that is grounded in impact. Practice communicating what you are doing vs what people see.
2. Put it in writing
Email is underestimated as a professional tool, especially for women who are often not in the rooms where impressions are formed. Get in the habit of sending brief, professional follow-up emails after key conversations or projects.
"Hi xx, Glad we got to connect today about the Q2 plan. As a recap, the goal is to [insert goal here] I'll have the draft deliverables to you by Friday. Looking forward to the team presentation on [xx date]."
Emails are powerful because they create a paper trail, demonstrate initiative, and position you as someone who follows through. Always lean on documentation as a woman in the workplace and get everything in writing!
3. Stop softening your sentences before they have a chance to land.
Ditch phrases like "I just wanted to..." or "Sorry to bother you, but..." or "This might be a dumb idea, but..." or “does that make sense”
Those simple phrases are discrediting you right off the bat. Stand tall in what you have to say. Practice is the only thing that will help. So keep speaking up!
I want to be clear that communication skills are not a cure-all. The structural and policy-level issues still need to be addressed (persistently) but that change starts with a conversation.
I've thought a lot about how lasting workplace change actually happens. It doesn't start with policy documents. It starts with people asking questions. My own framework for this is simple.
Begin with conversations. Have them with your colleagues, your manager, your friends, the men in your life. Ask something honest and open-ended: "If you could design work and family life any way you wanted, what would that look like?" You'll be surprised what comes up when people feel safe enough to answer. Ideas surface. Common threads emerge. And once there's enough shared language around a problem, it becomes possible to push for something real.
That's how mentorship programs get built. That's how flexible scheduling policies get written into employee handbooks. That's how allyship goes from a buzzword to a Tuesday morning where someone brings you coffee because they know your mornings are hard. Small conversations, repeated and compounded, become the foundation for structural change.
Mentorship, specifically, is something I feel deeply about — and not just as a leadership strategy. My grandmother said, two years before she passed, something that has stayed with me ever since:
"Women mentoring women is important. Oftentimes, women have had men as mentors, and that is not the same. Women do work differently than men, and women leaders need to add female mentoring to their tasks. It will not only reward other women and help them expand their vision of what they can be — it will help the mentors more clearly define their jobs and see their own worth."
She was right. And the data backs her up. Women are less likely to aspire to leadership when they haven't seen it modeled. There are only 41 female CEOs in Fortune 500 companies. Just 8.2%. When women don't see themselves reflected at the top, they stop imagining themselves there. Mentorship interrupts that pattern. It says: I see you. I was where you are. And I'll show you the path I found.
If you are in a position to mentor another woman, even informally, even once every other month over coffee, please do it. Not because it's your obligation, but because the woman who mentored you (or who should have) would have wanted someone to do the same for her.
And while we're talking about the systemic piece: allyship doesn't require a committee or a budget. Some of the most meaningful support I've seen working mothers receive has come from the simplest gestures. A colleague who drops coffee on a hectic morning. A quick "you've got this" text before a high-stakes presentation. A dinner showing up at the door (yes, even a frozen pizza and a bagged salad) from someone who knew it had been that kind of week. A friend who offers to take the kids for an afternoon so there can be two hours of quiet. These things matter. They say: I see the load you're carrying. Let me take a piece of it.
Twenty-five years of data tell us a complicated story. We've made gains. Women have entered professional fields that were once largely closed to us. We've built businesses, led organizations, changed laws, and done all of it while also being asked to carry the home. But the pay gap is still seventeen cents. The C-suite is still overwhelmingly male. And the caregiving math still falls disproportionately on us.
Progress, it turns out, is not a straight line.
But I do not believe that means we stand still. I believe it means we communicate more strategically. We mentor more intentionally. We speak up in rooms where our perspective is missing, and we write it down so there's a record. We build the kinds of workplaces through conversation, ideation, and action that future working women will inherit and not have to fight so hard to survive in.
Happy Women's History Month.
Want to talk about how communication can support the women on your team? I'd love to connect. Work with Jenna here.
