As the first woman to run the most powerful bank in the country, Yellen has been disciplined about limiting public comments to monetary policy, The Washington Post reports. But, Yellen went off-script recently to stress that the key to jumpstarting the economy is to remove obstacles that have kept women from being full and equal participants. 

"A number of factors appear to be holding women back, including the difficulty women currently have in trying to combine their careers with other aspects of their lives, including caregiving," Yellen said earlier this month at a conference honoring women who were admitted to Providence, Rhode Island’s Brown University 125 years ago.

Human Resources can play a big role in reducing the gender equality gap in the workplace as HR staff is often charged with recruiting, diversity and compensation responsibilities at firms, the Society For Human Resource Management (SHRM) notes. Another factor is that HR is the one profession where women dominate. 

“People working at companies often see HR as the key agents of change when there’s a problem like a lack of women in leadership,” says Ursula Mead, CEO and founder of InHerSight, a website where users can rate the female-friendliness of companies. “So if HR isn’t committed to gender diversity and isn’t championing it, the needle won’t move.”

But the challenges are significant. The U.S. workforce needs more women as one-fifth of workers will hit retirement age by 2029 and productivity continues to drop, Yellen said.

While gross domestic product (GDP) grew more than 3% during most of the 1980s and 1990s, that came to a halt after the 2008 recession. The GDP growth rate was a meager 0.7% in the first quarter this year. Today, nearly 70% of men work away from home compared to 57% of women. 

“One recent study estimates that increasing the female participation rate to that of men would raise our gross domestic product by 5%,” Yellen said. Women in the U.S. also earn less--about 79 cents for every dollar that men receive, she noted. 

“The gap in earnings between men and women has narrowed substantially, but progress has slowed lately,” Yellen said. “Even when we compare men and women in the same or similar occupations who appear nearly identical in background and experience, a gap of about 10% typically remains.”

The U.S. Census notes that the annual earnings ratio has not changed significantly since 2007, according to a new report on the gender pay gap from the American Association of University Women. “At the rate of change between 1960 and 2015, women are expected to reach pay equity with men in 2059,” the report notes. “But even that slow progress has stalled in recent years. If change continues at the slower rate seen since 2001, women will not reach pay equity with men until 2152.”

Women still are not afforded the same opportunities as men and are underrepresented across many industries, Yellen said. And women in the U.S. workforce trail their counterparts in European and Asian nations when it comes to being afforded paid family leave and subsidized child care, said economist Heidi Hartmann, founder of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. “The extent to which we don’t talk about gender is the extent to which we don’t have a complete picture of how the economy works,” Hartmann said.

Yellen’s position also makes her well versed on the importance of women in the workforce, Hartmann said.  “When you consider the job of the Fed is economic growth, then it’s perfectly logical to be speaking about unemployed people,” Hartmann said. “Women’s employment is low compared to similar women in other countries.”

The U.S. showed some promise in 1990 when it came to participation of women in the workforce. It ranked sixth highest out of 22 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, Hartmann said. But by 2010, the U.S. had plunged to 17th place. 

Yellen argued that it was crucial to narrow the wage gap between men and women and to confront the lack of workplace opportunities if the U.S. hopes to realize sustainable growth, Fortune reports. 

While there has been progress, “evidence suggests that many women remain unable to achieve their goals,” she said.