There’s a number that rarely makes the evening news. According to the Center for American Progress, women’s labor contributes about $7.6 trillion to the US GDP every year. To put that in perspective, it’s more than Japan’s entire economy. And it doesn’t even account for the unpaid work that includes childcare, elder care, and the household management that keeps millions of families functioning.
Yet for a long time, the economic conversation treated women as a side note. A demographic to market to. Women now make up nearly half the US labor force. They control around 80% of household spending decisions. They’re starting businesses at twice the rate of the overall population and leading companies across every major sector.
However, women still experience unfair treatment when it comes to pay, credit access, and how unpaid labor gets ignored. Below, we explain what position women occupy in the US economy today, how they affect it, and the challenges they face.
Women Contribute Enormously to the Economy
When it comes to the connection between women and the economy, the pay gap is always a topic of discussion. The issue still exists and needs to be addressed.
Nowadays, women make up nearly 47% of the US labor force and control about 80% of spending in the household. Women’s contribution is very often overlooked, but it moves markets.
Why does no one talk about how supporting women changes economies? Helping women financially is closely connected to good economics. Countries and communities that invest in women’s participation in the economy witness positive effects:
- Sustained GDP growth
- Lower poverty rates
- Better economic outcomes for children
Women-owned businesses in the US generate over $1.9 trillion in annual revenue, according to the National Women’s Business Council. The number continues to grow. Economists now estimate that the actual number is much higher than it was before, and it does not take into account the women’s unpaid labor in:
- Childcare
- Elder care
- Household management
Corporate World and Women
Women hold about 30% of leadership positions in the US alone. The number has risen from 17% in 2015. The progress is still there, even though the number leaves much to be desired. Women dominate the workforce but continue to be underrepresented at the leadership level in healthcare, education, and retail.
The numbers are just a small part of the bigger picture. Expectations add up, too, and they have shifted for women over the past decades. Women have become a valuable part of corporate life, and the number of women is still growing, changing the workplace situation:
- Major companies are now responsible for gender diversity like never before
- Transparency laws for fair payments are spreading state by state
The work here is not done. The gender pay gap for full-time workers still hits 85 cents on the dollar. It is especially experienced by Black and Hispanic women.
What is more, women’s earnings tend to unfairly dip after having children, while men’s earnings often rise. And this is still one of the major issues.
Women Entrepreneurs
Women-owned businesses are one of the fastest-growing segments of the US economy, and they’re doing it the hard way. Between 2019 and 2023, the number grew at nearly double the rate of the overall market. Not because the conditions were favorable. Because the women building them refused to wait for favorable conditions.
The funding gap tells the real story. Women own nearly 40% of all US businesses but pull in roughly 2% of venture capital. No shortcuts, just the business, the grind, and whatever personal capital they could scrape together. The results of growth, revenue, and staying power are happening despite the system, not because of it.
Women’s Unpaid Labor
Unfortunately, GDP doesn’t measure everything that really matters. When it comes to women’s economic contribution, the gap between what gets counted and what actually exists is shocking. Indeed, women perform, on average, 2.5 times more unpaid care and domestic work than men. That unpaid labor that is very often overlooked includes:
- Childcare
- Elder care
- Cooking
- Household management
- Invisible logistical labor that keeps families and communities running
When economists have tried to put a dollar figure on this, the results are hard to ignore. The International Labour Organization estimates that unpaid care work contributes roughly $10.9 trillion to the global economy each year. In fact, it is more than the combined output of several G7 nations.
The Situation in the US
In the US specifically, unpaid labor is heavily female. It all props up the formal economy in ways that never show up on a balance sheet. The businesses that rely on a healthy, educated, well-fed workforce depend on this labor every day. They just don’t pay for it.
The economic knock-on effects are significant. Women who carry a disproportionate unpaid load have less time to:
- Invest in career development
- Build personal savings
- Start or grow a business
Hours spent doing unpaid work are hours that can’t be spent on paid work, and that asymmetry compounds over a lifetime into a real and measurable wealth gap. Unpaid labor is viewed not as a lifestyle choice but as an economic contribution. This raises the question of what women need to succeed financially.
Financial Independence of Women
On average, women in the US hold only 32 cents of wealth for every dollar held by men. That issue is related to credit access, investment accounts, and having an emergency fund.
Below is a comparison of what is expected from a woman in businesses and what it actually means:
| The reality for women-owned businesses | What it means in practice |
| Eligible for loans at lower rates than men | Fewer opportunities to scale |
| Approved for smaller loans | Less runway to grow |
| Shorter credit histories | Penalized for a system that excluded them historically |
In the US, lenders consistently undervalue women-led ventures. That’s where short-term financial tools come in:
- Cash advances
- Personal loans
- Flexible credit
Not as ongoing financial support, but just to help get back on track. When an invoice sits unpaid for 60 days, when an emergency hits before payday, when a business owner doesn’t have the credit history a bank wants to see, fast, honest financial support is typically what keeps the doors open.
The situation is changing, but slowly for now. More women are moving into top roles in the sphere of finance and building their own products, and the difference shows. Clearer terms with more flexibility and less fine print. When the person designing the tool has lived the problem, the product, as the solution, tends to reflect that.
A Woman as a CEO: Latoria Williams Story
There’s usually no concrete cases when people talk about how women impact the economy. There are a lot of stories of women who make a difference. Latoria Williams, CEO of 1F Cash Advance, is a great example of how that actually happens in real life.
Williams started building her career in traditional lending around 20 years ago. She started working in entry-level roles at Ameriquest and Wachovia. After that, she moved into senior positions at PNC, Morgan Stanley, and Fifth Third Bank.
She didn’t have favorable conditions to support her and did everything by herself. She studied the lending system from the inside, she analyzed it and identified its issues. This helped her in creating a product that would serve as a solution to issues that people face as clients.
1F Cash Advance was built to support everyday Americans who don’t possess a credit profile and who don’t have a financial cushion, especially when most banks did not help.
Building a lending company around addressing that specific issue took more than just creating a business plan. It took someone who actually believed the problem needed to be addressed.
“Nobody talks about the middle phase between the launch and the breakthrough. About the struggles people face. This phase can last long enough, and it’s lonely, and it demands a lot of resources from you. I’ve learned that it’s not a sign something’s wrong, but it just shows what the process of heading in the right direction looks like,” says Williams.
In fact, Williams’ story is not new to women in business. Lessons are learned the hard way by many who end up leaving a broken system.
Williams actually did it and the company she built reflects exactly that. A lending product that’s clearer, fairer, and designed for people asking for help the industry kept ignoring.
The Numbers Behind the Story
Closing the remaining gaps in pay, accessible childcare and funding access would add hundreds of billions to GDP. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research claims that closing the pay gap alone would inject $512 billion into the US economy per year.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women’s labor force participation has risen steadily over 20 years:
- Women get more bachelor’s degrees (even more than men do now)
- Women start businesses and lead teams
- Women manage wealth at rates that didn’t even exist a generation ago
The Bottom Line
The pay gap, childcare bills, and funding shortfalls are the things that keep the economy from running at full capacity. Fixing these challenges isn’t a favor to women. It would add hundreds of billions to GDP and reduce financial instability. And that’s what the numbers say.
The debate about whether women belong in business, finance, or leadership is over. What’s left is both more complicated and practical: pay structures, funding gaps, the childcare math that doesn’t add up. That’s where the real work is now.
And plenty of women aren’t waiting for it to get solved. They’re building their lives anyway, on tighter budgets and with less backing, in industries that weren’t originally structured to include women. The economy is better for it, even if the economy doesn’t reflect it yet.