This year, the number of mothers with young children exiting the U.S. labor market saw the sharpest January-to-June decline in more than four decades. That isn’t a coincidence—and it isn’t a lack of ambition.

Across industries, women are reassessing how—and whether—work fits into their lives. Not because they want to step back, but because too many workplaces are still designed around outdated assumptions about who provides care and how work gets done. As leaders debate return-to-office mandates, women are quietly doing the math—and deciding whether staying is worth the cost.

This isn’t a women’s issue. It’s a design failure. And it’s one leaders can choose to fix.

The pandemic exposed and intensified a long-standing dilemma: how working women can balance their careers with family demands. Even years later, in dual-income households, women continue to shoulder the majority of caregiving responsibilities, often juggling work, childcare, elder care, and the invisible but relentless mental load that comes with it. Even now, many women are still working two full-time jobs: one at work and another at home.

In a recent workplace study conducted by my company, 65% of working mothers reported carrying more household and childcare responsibilities than their partners, and nearly half said they shoulder most of the mental and emotional burden at home. When workplaces remain rigid and unsupportive, that strain........

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