Women in the workforce

Women in the workforce earning wages or salary are part of a modern phenomenon, one that developed at the same time as the growth of paid employment for men, but women have been challenged by inequality in the workforce. Until modern times, legal and cultural practices, combined with the inertia of longstanding religious and educational conventions, restricted women's entry and participation in the workforce. Economic dependency upon men, and consequently the poor socio-economic status of women, have had the same impact, particularly as occupations have become professionalized over the 19th and 20th centuries. Women in the workforce earning wages or salary are part of a modern phenomenon, one that developed at the same time as the growth of paid employment for men, but women have been challenged by inequality in the workforce. Until modern times, legal and cultural practices, combined with the inertia of longstanding religious and educational conventions, restricted women's entry and participation in the workforce. Economic dependency upon men, and consequently the poor socio-economic status of women, have had the same impact, particularly as occupations have become professionalized over the 19th and 20th centuries. Women's lack of access to higher education had effectively excluded them from the practice of well-paid and high status occupations. Entry of women into the higher professions like law and medicine was delayed in most countries due to women being denied entry to universities and qualification for degrees; for example, Cambridge University only fully validated degrees for women late in 1947, and even then only after much opposition and acrimonious debate. Women were largely limited to low-paid and poor status occupations for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, or earned less pay than men for doing the same work. However, through the 20th century, the labor market shifted. Office work that does not require heavy labor expanded, and women increasingly acquired the higher education that led to better-compensated, longer-term careers rather than lower-skilled, shorter-term jobs. The increasing rates of women contributing in the work force has led to a more equal disbursement of hours worked across the regions of the world. However, in western European countries the nature of women's employment participation remains markedly different from that of men. Although access to paying occupations (the 'workforce') has been and remains unequal in many occupations and places around the world, scholars sometimes distinguish between 'work' and 'paying work', including in their analysis a broader spectrum of labor such as uncompensated household work, childcare, eldercare, and family subsistence farming. As the Civil War raged in the U.S., Virginia Penny of Louisville, Kentucky was finished her research project and published the ground-breaking book, How women can make money married or single, in all branches of the arts and sciences, professions, trades, agricultural and mechanical pursuits (Philadelphia, 1862). Hoping to offer hard facts about what women in the workforce would encounter, Penny had interviewed thousands of employers, using both a survey via the postal mail and in person – when she would also interview workers. Many of her site visits were in Philadelphia, New York and Boston. She distilled her research to list over 500 jobs that were open to women as well as the information about the jobs and potential availability for women. She also indicated when employers offered their reasons for wage differentials based on gender. She dedicated her book 'to worthy and industrious women in the United States, striving to earn a livelihood,' and the book garnered much attention from reviewers and scholars across the country. She sold her rights to the book to another publisher who put it out as an encyclopedia, The Employments of Women: A Cyclopaedia of Woman's Work, in 1863. It sold better once it was re-titled again in 1870 as How Women Can Make Money, Married or Single. In its several different versions, 36 editions were published between 1862 and 2006, and six editions of the adaptation in German (first published in 1867). In the twentieth century, division of labor by gender has been studied most systematically in women's studies (especially women's history, which has frequently examined the history and biography of women's participation in particular fields) and gender studies more broadly. Occupational studies, such as the history of medicine or studies of professionalization, also examine questions of gender, and the roles of women in the history of particular fields. Women dominate as accountants, auditors, and psychologists. In addition, modern civil rights law has frequently examined gender restrictions of access to a field of occupation; gender discrimination within a field; and gender harassment in particular workplaces. This body of law is called employment discrimination law, and gender and race discrimination are the largest sub-sections within the area. Laws specifically aimed at preventing discrimination against women have been passed in many countries; see, e.g., the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in the United States.