Author Britt Thorson and her daughter. | Photo courtesy of Britt Thorson
What you probably already know: Women, especially mothers, are leaving traditional full-time roles. After pandemic-era gains, workforce participation among moms is slipping again, with tens of thousands exiting in recent months. At the same time, return-to-office mandates, layoffs, and AI disruption are reshaping how work happens.
What you might not realize: Many of those women aren’t necessarily opting out, they’re opting sideways into freelance, fractional and part-time work. I’m one of them. After my daughter was born in 2024, going back to a full-time job felt nearly impossible — physically, financially, logistically. Even with strong parental leave, the reality of childcare costs, recovery and the day-to-day unpredictability of a baby made the idea of returning to a rigid schedule daunting. When my role was eventually eliminated, freelancing became less of a choice and more like the only path forward. In many ways, it worked. I could take meetings around naps. I didn’t panic when my child got sick. I stopped focusing on that green Slack dot. But the tradeoffs were no joke.
Why it matters: According to reporting from Business Insider, women are disproportionately affected by both layoffs and AI disruption, with those in highly automatable roles 16% more likely to be female. At the same time, more than half of executives say return-to-office policies are driving women out of their companies. Freelancing is filling that gap. Nearly 44% of knowledge freelancers are women, according to Upwork, slightly higher than in comparable full-time roles. And 77% of business leaders say AI is increasing their reliance on contract and fractional talent. In other words, companies are building a system that depends on flexible labor, without necessarily supporting the people providing it.
What it means: Freelance work offers something traditional jobs often don’t: control. For me, that means being present for doctor’s appointments, sick days, and the general chaos of early parenthood. As I prepare for a second child, that flexibility feels a bit less like a perk, and more like a necessity. But it also means blurred boundaries, inconsistent (and lower) income, and the constant low-level pressure to find the next gig. I’ve traded one kind of stress for another. And like many women, I’ve become the default parent during the work week — not because of gender dynamics, but because flexibility must live somewhere.
What happens next: We’ve known since the pandemic that work isn’t going back to what it was in many ways. But it also hasn’t fully evolved into something sustainable, either. Until companies rethink flexibility beyond early parenthood and beyond full-time roles, women will keep building parallel systems to make work and life fit together. The question is whether those systems will ever be treated as the future of work or just a workaround.
