Women in the Workforce

Women’s lives have changed substantially since the mid-twentieth century. While women have long worked as teachers, administrative assistants, nurses, childcare providers, hairdressers, retail workers, and domestic workers, in recent decades more have joined professions that were previously dominated by men: medicine, law, engineering, finance, factory work, and so forth. By 2023, about 75 percent of US women aged 25 to 54 were employed, whether or not they had children. Some of this change was due to initiatives by governments and nongovernmental organizations to improve access to education for women, while some of the change was due to changing social norms in which women are now both expected and desire to be self-sufficient. While these initiatives have helped propel women into rewarding careers in all professions, improving their quality of life by advancing their economic power, debate over traditional gender roles and pay equality remain critical issues in the United States and in many countries around the world.

Overview

In the decades following World War II, the number of women in the workforce in the United States and many other Western countries increased. This increase can be attributed to a number of factors, including increased employment opportunities open to women, access to education, a breakdown of traditional gender roles, affordable health care and child care, federal protection of workers’ rights, antidiscrimination laws, and a decrease in women’s economic dependency on men. Overall, the increased presence of women in the workforce is considered to have had a dramatic impact on the economic stability of many nations and contributed to the success of many international efforts aimed at the protection of women’s rights and family health.

Additionally, international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank reported increases in women entering the workforce of many developing nations due in part to expanded educational opportunities for girls and women, improved health care, and increased international focus on women’s rights, including pressure on legal systems to prosecute violence against women. In fact, the No Ceilings report issued by the Full Participation Project in early 2015 found that by 2010 there was near-parity in primary education enrollment in all global regions except sub-Saharan Africa.

In early 2010, the US government reported that women represented the majority of the professional workforce for the first time in history. Statistical data also revealed that more women were enrolled in university and professional educational programs, with a gradation rate double that of their male counterparts. Despite this trend, women typically earned less than men for the same jobs, and a 2013 federal report showed that families headed by females earned far less than two-person households headed by men. A 2013 Pew Social and Demographic Trends report showed that as of 2012, young women began their careers earning 93 cents on the dollar as compared to their male peers, yet over the preceding three decades, young women's earnings had tended to fall off over time relative to men's. Women were also reported to represent a lower percentage of workers in the science, technology, mathematics, and engineering (STEM) professions despite recent increases.

Many researchers recognize that sex discrimination and cultural values remain serious hindrances to women's full participation in the paid workforce. The No Ceilings report found that the numbers of women participating in the formal global workplace was stuck at 55 percent, with much lower percentages in socially conservative countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and even Japan. Researchers believed unfavorable maternity leave policies and social pressure to remain in the home, as well as a gender gap in internet access among citizens of developing nations, to be contributing factors to that stagnation. Others pointed to drops in workplace participation among women in developed nations such as the United States due in part to the global recession of the late 2000s and ensuing budget cuts to fields traditionally dominated by women, such as education.

The COVID-19 pandemic had far-reaching impacts on women in the workforce in the United States and internationally as well. While the pandemic caused job losses among all genders, the Pew Research Center reported that such losses were far greater among women, especially those with less education. A 2022 report revealed that the number of American women who left the labor force between 2019 and 2021 who had only a high school education decreased by 6 percent and women without a high school education in the workforce declined by 12.8 percent during that period. In contrast, the declines for men in the workforce from 2019 to 2021 were 1.8 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively. The increase in women exiting the workforce during the pandemic was attributed to the fact that more women work in fields such as health care and food preparation that experienced greater impacts from the pandemic. Further, women are more likely to work in jobs that necessitate working in-person instead of having the option to work remotely, and childcare duties overwhelmingly fell to women during the pandemic when many schools and childcare centers were closed.

Meanwhile, the gender pay gap remained relatively unchanged in the US during the first decades of the twenty-first century. In 2002, women earned an average of 80 percent of what men earned. By 2022, women earned only slightly more, making 82 percent of men's earnings on average. Though the wage gap remained smaller among younger workers, those numbers, too, did not alter much between 2002 and 2022, as women overall continued to be overrepresented in low-paying jobs, despite making some gains in higher-paying professions. Furthermore, the Pew Research Center reported that the gender pay gap was even wider among women of color; in 2022, for example, Hispanic women earned just 65 percent of men's earnings on average, and Black women earned 70 percent of what men earned.

By 2023, however, the number of women in the labor force had begun to climb back up to pre-pandemic levels. A report published by the Center for American Progress revealed that three-quarters of women 25 to 54 years old held jobs that year, with 84 percent of employed women working full-time. Women’s rights groups and international organizations continued to push for pay equality and new opportunities for women in the workforce throughout the early twenty-first century. For example, the national push for gender equality in the workforce helped prompt the US military to open restricted combat work roles to qualifying women in 2013, with integration completed by 2016. In 2023, the administration of President Joe Biden announced initiatives to promote gender equity in the labor market through its enforcement of such legislation as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which helped increase the number of women in construction jobs in the US. Despite the debate, research has proven that women in the workforce have had a positive impact on the health of the global economy and the improved health and well-being of families across the world.

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