The increasing number of women in the workplace stems from long-term economic trends, “which likely have very little to do with Trump’s policies,” said Heidi Hartmann, president and CEO of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. For most of the last 50 years, she said, men have been decreasing their workforce participation, while women have been increasing theirs. “Men were maxed out for their labor participation,” she said. “They have been using economic growth as a way to work less.” Women, on the other hand, have been pursuing higher education in larger numbers, “trying to catch up with men.” (Women now account for 57 percent of enrollment at U.S. colleges and universities.) While employment rates for both genders stagnated in the early 2000s and through the recession, Hartmann said, women have since rebounded, continuing to join the workforce at a faster rate than men.