In an unusually personal speech, Janet L. Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, said Friday that policies making it easier for women to work could significantly improve the nation’s economic growth.
The sweeping movement of women from the home to the workplace during the mid-20th century, she said, was a “major factor in America’s prosperity.” But that progress has stalled in recent decades, leaving women less likely than men to hold paying jobs. Bringing more women into the work force with policies like expanding the availability of paid leave, affordable childcare and flexible work schedules, she said, could help to lift the American economy from a long stretch of slow growth.
“Evidence suggests that many women remain unable to achieve their goals,” Ms. Yellen said in a speech at Brown University. “If these obstacles persist, we will squander the potential of many of our citizens and incur a substantial loss to the productive capacity of our economy at a time when the aging of the population and weak productivity growth are already weighing on economic growth.”
