The gig economy unlocked your car, your spare room, and your backyard pool. It never asked the same question about the most productive underutilized asset in the American economy. Women's labor contributes $7.6 trillion to US GDP annually — more than Japan's entire economy. The IMF calls the failure to deploy it a "misallocation of resources." A 2025 Minneapolis Fed paper found that rising female labor force participation built the Great Moderation, the longest period of economic stability in modern American history. Then 2025 arrived: 212,000 women left the workforce in seven months, return-to-office mandates spread, and childcare costs hit 20% of the average family's income. This week on The Tradeoff, Mattie Duppler makes the case that this isn't a women's issue — it's a capital allocation problem as wasteful as a car sitting in a driveway, and as solvable as the taxi cab cartels that used to govern transportation in every American city.

It All Begins Here