What the 2025 Women in the Workplace Report Means for Husbands Who Want to Be Better Teammates at Home
- Brian Page
- Dec 15, 2025
- 7 min read
Table of Contents
Women in the Workplace is the largest and longest running study of women’s experiences in corporate America. This year’s report is one of the most urgent yet. After more than a decade of progress, organizations appear to be stepping back from their commitments to gender equity, and women are feeling the consequences at work and at home.
If you are a husband in a dual career household, this report matters to you. Not because you can fix your partner’s workplace. But because the systems inside your home directly affect the support, time, and emotional bandwidth your wife has to advance in her career.
In the Modern Husbands community, we talk often about the reality that marriages thrive when couples manage money, chores, and the mental load as a team. Research like this underscores why your partnership at home is not just about fairness. It is about her professional future.
A Snapshot of the 2025 Report: Progress at Risk
The 2025 edition draws on data from 124 organizations employing 3 million people, nearly 10 thousand surveyed employees, and dozens of HR leaders. What it reveals is deeply concerning.
First, corporate commitment to women’s advancement is declining. For the first time in the report’s history, only about half of companies say women’s career progress is a high priority. Even fewer prioritize the advancement of women of color. This matters. Companies that prioritize women make faster gains. Those that do not fall behind.
Second, women’s ambition appears to be slipping, at least on the surface. This year, fewer women than men say they want to be promoted. But the report makes something very clear. When women receive the same level of sponsorship, mentorship, and manager support as men, the ambition gap disappears. Women want to advance. They simply face more headwinds.
These headwinds start early. Entry level women receive less guidance from senior colleagues, fewer stretch assignments, and less access to sponsors, the very things that accelerate careers. They are also promoted less often. This is the eleventh consecutive year the report has documented a broken rung at the first step up to manager. Without that first promotion, women fall behind for the rest of their careers.
Asian women, Black women, and Latinas face even steeper challenges. Asian women receive less advocacy from senior colleagues. Black women report some of the highest burnout and job insecurity in leadership. Latinas express the strongest ambition to advance, yet still face systemic barriers to doing so.
Flexibility stigma is another silent threat. Women who work remotely most of the week often because they shoulder more responsibilities at home are promoted less often than women who work on site. Men do not experience the same penalty. This means the very solutions that make dual career life possible for many families can quietly stall women’s upward mobility.
Burnout is also surging. Senior level women report the highest levels of burnout in five years, and they are more likely to consider leaving their organizations. When women step back or step away, families, businesses, and communities lose out.
Why This Matters for Husbands
If your wife is part of the workforce, and statistically she is, these findings are not abstract. They shape the opportunities available to her, how she is evaluated, the support she receives, and the emotional weight she carries into your home at the end of the day.
But perhaps the most important insight in the entire report is this.
Women’s professional challenges are amplified by home systems that do not support them.
Nearly one quarter of entry level and senior level women who do not want a promotion say personal obligations make advancement feel unrealistic. Only 15 percent of comparable men say the same.
Why? Because women continue to perform the majority of housework, childcare, holiday planning, emotional labor, and invisible household management, even in couples who both work full time.
If you are a husband, this is where your influence is greatest. You may not be able to get her promoted. But you can build home systems that remove barriers, reduce stress, and create the conditions under which her ambition, talent, and opportunities can take root.
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An Astonishing Omission
The 2025 Women in the Workplace report completely failed to mention caregiving responsibilities such as childcare, eldercare, parenting, and unpaid domestic labor. These responsibilities disproportionately fall on women and shape their day to day career experiences. Leaving them out is not a small oversight but a fundamental gap in the analysis.
By ignoring caregiving, the report effectively erases the care gap that influences how women navigate work. Without acknowledging this burden, the data can make it appear as though women are less ambitious or less committed to their careers. This framing misses the realities many women are balancing outside of work.
As a result, the report misdiagnoses the problem. Instead of examining how workplaces fail to support caregivers, it places the burden back on women themselves. The real issue is not ambition but systems that have not evolved to account for the care that keeps families and economies running.
What the Report Reveals About the Support Women Need
1. Sponsorship and advocacy
Women advance faster when they have sponsors, people who open doors, recommend them for projects, and advocate for their talent. Yet women, especially at the entry level, are significantly less likely to have a sponsor.
You cannot be her workplace sponsor, but you can make it easier for her to pursue sponsors and visibility at work by protecting time, reducing mental load, and supporting professional commitments.
2. Protected time for deep work and growth
Women get fewer stretch assignments and fewer chances to lead high profile work. When opportunities do come, they require time. Without shared systems at home, time becomes a scarce resource.
3. Emotional safety and encouragement
Women report feeling less able to make mistakes or disagree in professional environments. At home, encouragement matters. Supportive partnership helps women take risks, recover from workplace biases, and stay confident in the face of structural challenges.
Actionable Steps Husbands Can Take to Support Their Working Wives
Your north star should have equal leisure time. And that leisure time can only be considered as such when the time is spent actively engaged in activities divorced from all responsibilities and fully engaged in the moment.
When your wife goes for a walk but is thinking about what needs to be done at home – she is not experiencing leisure time. When she’s on her phone looking for household products to buy on Amazon – she is not experiencing leisure time.
Her time is precious too, protect it.
1. Turn your home into a launchpad, not another workplace
Husbands should fully own domestic and caregiving responsibilities, not waiting for instructions, not asking for reminders, and not outsourcing the mental load to your partner. You choose the task, design the system, and execute it consistently. Examples:
You run all things school, including registrations, emails, permission slips, and calendars.
You manage bill payments, grocery inventory, or morning routines.
You take charge of recurring household logistics without her needing to follow up.
2. Protect her time with the same seriousness a workplace mentor would
If she has an important week ahead, step up without waiting to be asked.
Handle dinner and bedtime [Check out our Food page].
Decline optional invitations for the family.
Build uninterrupted blocks of time for her to prepare, write, or practice.
Treat her deadlines as you want yours to be treated.
3. Become a champion of her ambition
Ask her directly, “What does support look like for you this week.” Then follow through.
Celebrate her successes. Women receive less recognition at work, and encouragement at home fuels confidence. Normalize ambition. Remind her that she deserves rest, respect, and opportunity.
4. Reduce the mental load through shared systems
Mental load is the invisible work of remembering, anticipating, coordinating, and planning. It is exhausting and it is unevenly distributed.
Build shared systems such as:
A unified household calendar with responsibilities clearly assigned.
A weekly household retrospective to identify what needs adjustment.
Standard operating procedures for recurring tasks like laundry, childcare, or finances.
These systems keep the home from defaulting to her.
5. Support her well being with intention
Burnout is not solved at work alone.
Protect her sleep and recovery time.
Encourage rest without guilt.
Step in proactively when you see signs of overload.
Rest is not a luxury. It is a prerequisite for leadership.
Husbands Matter More Than Ever
The 2025 Women in the Workplace report is a clear call to action. The barriers women face at work are significant, but the support men provide at home can meaningfully shift what is possible for their partners.
Your role is not passive. You are a co-architect of your family’s systems. You are a co-strategist in your partner’s ambitions. You are a teammate whose actions either increase or decrease the invisible load she carries.
When husbands step up fully, consistently, and with intention, women thrive, marriages strengthen, and families flourish.
Professional Support
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I'm the only Accredited Financial Counselor® and Fair Play Facilitator®, empowering high-achieving couples with systems to manage money and the home as a team — drawn from decades of national leadership and lived experience.
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