Melissa NICHOLSON

MELISSA NICHOLSON: When you start job sharing at work, you start applying the practice everywhere—trusting your partner to parent, being more flexible in allowing your partner to do it their way, and understanding that the schedule means you need your partner to step in on the home front during those intense workdays job sharing.

Introduction

INTRO: Welcome to Job Share Revolution. The show about job sharing—a partnership between two people to bring two minds and skill sets to one full-time position. I’m Melissa Nicholson, former job sharer turned founder of the first U.S. job share company. But it wasn’t long ago that I felt like an utter failure at work and as a new parent. Job sharing was my game-changer. I reclaimed four days a week to fully engage in my life while my capable partner handled everything. Together, we achieved more than I ever could solo. Fast forward to many lessons learned to bring you the training and support I wish I’d had to change lives and the modern-day workplace. Let’s live life and slay work.

Melissa NICHOLSON INTRO

MELISSA NICHOLSON: Hey friend, it’s Mel. I am so glad that you are here. And I know that life is busy, so I want to thank you for spending your time with us today on the Jobshare Revolution podcast. Welcome back to our special series on the seven biggest challenges driving the great working mom exodus of 2025.

In our last episode, we tackled return-to-office mandates and how they’re forcing women out of the workforce. Today, we’re going to talk about something that might seem less obvious but is equally powerful: the cultural shifts around gender roles that are happening right now. Right now in 2025.

And I gotta say, as somebody who identifies as a feminist and a gender equity champion, somebody who feels really strongly, deeply about equality at home and a coparenting household—who, I have benefited from having a very equal distribution of unpaid labor at home—the household chore management, the unpaid labor, the mental load, even, thanks to my job share—this one really just freakin’ bothers me.  It really really gets under my skin.

Before we dive in, if you haven’t listened to Episode 52 yet, go back and start there. We’re building on each episode to give you the full picture of what’s happening and what you can do about it.

Okay, let’s get into it.

The Cultural Landscape

So here is what is happening: Traditionalist movements promoting the “tradwife” or the stay-at-home parent role are gaining serious social traction. I’m talking TikTok, Instagram, YouTube—millions of followers watching highly curated content that romanticizes 1950s domesticity and homemaking.

Yeah, it’s a real Serena Joy moment. It feels like The Handmaid’s Tale.   I mean, you’ve probably seen them, right? Women in vintage dresses, baking sourdough from scratch, homeschooling their kids, talking about how fulfilled they are staying home while their husbands provide for the family. It seems really tantalizing, right? Like, the lifestyle looks so freakin’ peaceful. And for  women who are just drowning in the chaos of trying to do it all without a social safety net, I could see how that could be so appealing.

And we can’t overlook Project 2025, 47% of which has been enacted in the first seven months of the Trump presidency alone. I mean, in the first seven months of the year, womens’ workplace participation fell by 2% overall, and 3% when you look at working moms of kids under five, of young families.

The Trump A  dministration has made no bones about the fact that they want a return to the 1950s family structure. They’ve even floated paying families to have children. Jessica Grose pointed it out in her Opinion piece for The New York Times, American Women Are Leaving The Workforce. Why?  Project 2025 “calls for anything dedicated to tracking gender equality to be rebranded as serving women, children, and families.”

The Trump Administration defunded the Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau, which goes all the way back to suffrage times, to 1920, and advancing womens’ interests in the workplace, suggesting it get zero grants in fiscal year 2026. So if the federal government has literally defunded the thing that advances womens’ interests at work. You can just see how this is in the zeitgeist. That it’s playing into this “tradwife.”

But here’s what we need to talk about: While not a direct workplace policy, these cultural shifts are contributing to external pressures on mothers and can exacerbate feelings of “mom guilt,” impacting our mental well-being and our professional focus.

A poll published by The 19th News in September 2025 found that half of Americans—50%—believe society would benefit from a return to traditional gender roles. But here’s where it really gets interesting: Nearly six in ten men agreed with that, compared with only four in ten women.

Years ago, I heard this podcast episode. It was a news podcast episode. It may have been The Daily or NPR, but what I really remember—it was during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings—was the data and the research for how sexist the views coming out of the United States were compared to, like, Canada and other European countries…

And if you think about it, I think in that moment, I realized just how intrinsic sexism was and how embedded sexism was in the U.S. in our culture, even if we as a country have kind of been in denial of it. If you think about it, we are one of the only democratic countries that hasn’t had a female president. There’s a reason for that.

So let’s come back to this poll by The 19th*. Let me say it again. Sixty percent of men versus forty percent of women believe that society would benefit from a return to traditional gender roles. That i s a 20-point gender gap in how we view this.

And to me, what was very surprising is the gap among Gen Z. It’s nineteen points, just one point less. So young men and women are diverging dramatically when it comes to culture and politics around gender roles.

Support was highest among Republican men at 87%, followed by Republican women at 79%. But even among Democrats, 26% of men supported a return to traditional roles compared to 21% of women.

Married men supported it at 62% compared to fewer than half of married women at 47%. And here’s a heartbreaker: 67% of dads support traditional gender roles compared to 52% of moms.

Why This Movement Is Growing

So why is this happening? Why now? Let me break down what’s driving this:

First, burnout culture backlash. After years of hustle culture and the high-pressure demand to “do it all,” some women see a return to traditional roles as an escape. They feel completely overwhelmed by juggling demanding careers with the unpaid labor of caregiving and domestic management. The idealized online image of the tradwife offers this great alternative, right? Like, a simpler vision, a less stressful life.

Second, economic anxiety. It is everywhere. The rising cost of living has made the two-income household a financial necessity for many. But it has also made the dream of a single-earner family feel completely unattainable for most, for some, right? For those who can afford it—and that’s key, this is often a privileged choice—this lifestyle can appear as a haven from economic pressure. It’s really appealing.

Third, response to societal instability. In a world shaped by rapid change and uncertainty, some find comfort in the stability and clear expectations of traditional gender roles. It’s simple. It’s easy, right? The movement has this nostalgia. The 1950s aesthetic offers an imagined past of greater security and predictability.

Fourth, social media influence. I mean, women are inundated with TikTok and Instagram. These platforms have been instrumental in fueling this trend. Influencers with millions of followers create these highly curated, aesthetically pleasing reels and posts, providing a sense of community for their followers.

And fifth, broader conservative political shifts. The tradwife movement aligns with the broader conservative push for traditional values and patriarchal social structures. This resurgence of traditionalism, combined with the “manosphere” where male influencers promote gender stereotypes, creates this social and political context that gives the tradwife message more weight.

Okay, stay with me. I know this is getting kind of bleak, but stay with me. We have to understand this if we are going to do anything about it and not let it affect us in the workplace, right?

Four Major Workplace Effects

So how does this cultural shift affect the workplace? There are four major effects we need to understand:

Stay with me, I promise, this will be worth it.

First, undermining gender equity efforts. As traditional gender roles gain social validation, corporate DEI Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives are being undermined. The movement frames traditional roles as a personal “choice,” which critics argue obscures systemic inequities that make such choices unattainable for many without significant privilege.

Second, exacerbating caregiving bias. The focus on women as primary caregivers reinforces the “maternal wall” bias, making employers more likely to assume a woman with children is less committed to her career. McKinsey’s 2025 “Women in the Workplace” report found that women were still significantly less likely than men to be promoted to manager, and the tradwife ideal could worsen this by normalizing the expectation that women will opt out.

Third, increased “mom guilt” and pressure. This curated, idealized homemaking presented online increases the psychological pressure on working mothers.  It just makes you feel like crap. The comparison between their own busy lives and the “perfect” domesticity online can amplify “mom guilt” and contribute to burnout. And if it is seeping into our workplaces and our attitudes, and other people’s attitudes, it’s just gonna have a trickle-down effect.

And fourth,  normalizing sexism. The movement can reinforce sexist behaviors and biases in the workplace. Gender stereotypes influence everything from performance evaluations to who is heard in meetings. The tradwife trend provides cover for these biases by framing traditional gender roles as desirable.

Now, I want to pause here and reframe something important. There’s worry that this cultural shift will increase friction between working and stay-at-home moms. But I want to give credit to Neha Ruch and her book The Power Pause for helping reframe the conversation.

You can be an ambitious woman who is a mom and you intentionally downshift, or you can take this pause with the intention of coming back stronger than ever. That’s not failure. That’s strategic. That’s powerful. We need to talk about motherhood with dignity, ambition, and intention—whether you’re working full-time, part-time, or taking a pause.

The problem isn’t women making different choices. The problem is a culture and workplace structure that forces us into impossible binaries: career or family, ambitious or present, breadwinner or caregiver.

What Employers Can Do

So what can employers do to combat these cultural shifts and keep women in the workplace? And I’m talking to you my managers, my people leaders. Here are three critical actions that employers can take:

First, double down on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Rather than running away from DEI policies, employers need to embed caregiver-conscious practices into workforce retention efforts. This isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s core to a company’s profitability. Conduct pay equity audits to identify and correct disparities driven by caregiver bias. Adopt robust parental leave policies. And institutionalize flexible work arrangements that acknowledge the realities of parenting.

Second, champion women into leadership. Support job sharing arrangements that allow women to rise through the ranks together as a team, giving them the ability to break the glass ceiling into leadership positions with the flexibility they need. There’s a reason they say one plus one equals three. When you promote job share teams together, you’re showing that caregiving responsibilities and senior leadership are compatible. And by the way, don’t just offer it to women. Offer job sharing to men and women alike.

Third, pair diverse teams into job shares. Consider cross-gender, cross-cultural, and even cross-generational job share teams for succession planning. When a man and woman job share together, or when diverse partners collaborate, it combats increased sexism and shows that caregiving and high performance are not gendered things.

What Working Mothers Can Do

And for you, working moms navigating these cultural pressures, here’s what you can do:

First, find and celebrate your community. Connect with other working mothers who share your values. Whether that’s through employee resource groups, online communities like our Job Share, Live Life & Slay Work Facebook group, or local networks—surround yourself with people who support your choices.

Second, reframe the narrative internally. Challenge your own “mom guilt” when it appears. Remind yourself that you’re not choosing between being a good mother and having a career—you’re modeling ambition, independence, and resilience for your children. Your work matters. I just want you to say it to yourself, like, “My work matters.”

Third, advocate for flexibility that actually works. Don’t settle for performative flexibility. Like, push for arrangements like job sharing that provide actual, real structure, real boundaries, and real time off.

How Job Sharing Combats Cultural Shifts

While we’re on the topic of job sharing, let me tell you why this practice is so, so powerful for combating these cultural shifts.

When you job share, you are not just changing how you work; you are changing everything. You are working completely differently. It’s like shoving five super productive, efficient days into three. And you have the support of the partner who is pushing you. You are accountable to one another. Quite simply, you just level up naturally, working this way.

Job sharing allows women who rise through the ranks together as a team the ability to break the glass ceiling into leadership positions with the flexibility they need. Over 70% who apply are promoted together as a team; there is a reason for that. You know, you are proving that you can be senior leadership, ambitious, and still have time to live your life.

Job share teams are seen as leaders because of the high level of shared accountability they have. They’re masters of communication—they have to be. They’re always ahead of deadlines for stakeholders because they never ever ever want to drop the ball for their partners. They become task masters who leverage both skill sets to achieve better results based on their diverse backgrounds.

And here’s something most people don’t know about job sharing—there’s a secret hidden benefit (I’ve talked about a little bit so maybe you know): organic, friction-free gender equality at home.

Let me tell you my personal story about this because it still just amazes me.

When I started job sharing, my daughter Iris, my daughter, was just six months old. My husband and I didn’t sit down and have some big negotiation about household labor. We didn’t fight about who was doing more. It just… happened.

On my three work days, I was 100% focused on work. My husband was the lead parent. I mean, he did kids’ drop-off and pick-up at daycare. They didn’t even really know me there. He was the first call if they were sick. They didn’t even know me at that daycare—that’s how much he was the point person on those days.

And on my four days off? I was the lead parent. I handled the appointments, the errands, the everything.

We were passing the co-parenting baton each week in my personal life, just like I did in my professional life. We halved the unpaid household labor. We halved the mental load. Now we had to train other people that we functioned this way as a family. And it didn’t happen with fighting and arguments. It happened in an organic, frictionless way.

When you start job sharing at work, you start applying the practice everywhere—trusting your partner to parent, being more flexible in allowing your partner to do it their way, and understanding that the schedule means you need your partner to step in on the home front during those intense workdays job sharing.

I job shared for a little over nine years—right up until Iris was in fourth or fifth grade. And even though I haven’t job shared in years now, those early years of equal parenting and household responsibilities have held up. We still have this very equal co-parenting dynamic today.

My daughter is a freshman in college and graduated this last year, and my son is right behind her; he’s a junior this year. They have such a strong relationship with their dad and it started way back when. He is so involved in their lives. And I think it has everything to do with those early years when job sharing taught us both to share the load at home.

You can talk about Fair Play all you want—I love Eve Rodsky’s book. It is incredible, and everyone should read it. But job sharing is like the work version of Fair Play that then naturally flows into your home life. It’s training you in real-time to give up control, trust your partner, and share the load.

And younger dads today? They’re into it. They want to lean into parenting. They actually value time with their children. Let’s empower them to do it—and job share too, by the way. We will all be better for it.

The Handover Magic

And here’s something beautiful about job sharing that helps combat these cultural shifts: that one day a week when you and your partner are both working—your handover day.

Most job share partners see each other primarily during this handover time. And oh my gosh, it’s the best. You’re so jazzed, so excited to be together. You jam-pack your schedules to meet as many clients as possible. You work on big projects when you’ve got the great synergy two people together can bring, or divide and conquer to get twice as much done.

That day showcases exactly what two professionals can do together. It’s visible proof that collaboration, flexibility, and high performance all coexist beautifully.

Closing

So let me wrap this up. Cultural shifts toward traditional gender roles are real, and they’re affecting workplaces whether we want to acknowledge it or not. We cannot help but be impacted by these shifts at work, too. We’re not in some real-life Severance where we can be one thing at work and entirely different in the world or at home. And I hope I didn’t depress you too much, but we have to dive into this because it is out there, it’s real. And job sharing is a strong way to combat it.

But here’s what I want you to remember: By acknowledging and understanding cultural shifts, mothers can combat them while winning on the work front. And having a supportive partner through job sharing can make nearly anything going on in the workplace or the world, for that matter, much, much easier because you have a built-in support system.

The world feels out of sorts right now. It’s wonky. It’s unstable. It’s affecting everyone. My goal with this series is that by understanding how these shifts affect us, we can meet the challenge while elevating women in the workplace.

Please please share it with a friend. It might help them feel more empowered and have lightbulbs and ahas go off as they see possibilities in what might feel like a discouraging time. So stick with me. Don’t let this dark episode get you down, okay? Okay.

Next week, we’re diving into the childcare crisis and affordability—an issue that’s forcing heartbreaking choices for so many families. You’re going to want to hear this one.

Until then, remember, I want you to take care of you this week. Sending you a lot of love. I’ll see you Tuesday after next, same time, same place. Remember, it’s all in you, friend.