{"id":171928,"date":"2010-01-12T12:00:03","date_gmt":"2010-01-12T17:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.33314"},"modified":"2010-01-12T12:19:44","modified_gmt":"2010-01-12T17:19:44","slug":"have-women-really-taken-over-the-workforce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/171928","title":{"rendered":"Have Women Really Taken Over The Workforce?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heralding<\/a> the triumph of women in the workforce last week, the Economist reported that women not only make up the majority of professional workers in many countries, but also that they earn nearly 60 percent of university degrees in America and Europe. Reinforcing the case for the Great Recession being a Great “Mancession,”<\/a> the article cites an unemployment rate of 8.6 percent for women but 11.2 percent for men.\u2028<\/p>\n

The cover, brandishing Rosie the Riveter and the headline: “We Did It!,” would suggest some kind of victorious finality. But the article admits several big concessions to the majority-female-workforce victory, most notably the pay gap. The average full-time female worker in Britain or the U.S. earns 80 percent as much as her male equivalent, though this gap shrinks if the woman is not a mother. Gender parity in the upper ranks looks equally bleak, with a tiny percentage of women in the boardrooms and C-Suites of Fortune 500 companies.<\/p>\n

Over at Forbes, Mark Rice links<\/a>
\nthe pay gap to research showing a decline in the happiness of American
\nwomen. U.S. maternity leave policies–the second-least generous policies
\nof the 30 OECD nations–are no help, he argues, especially in comparison
\nto Sweden’s extensive allowances for new parents. This almost-clich\u00e9
\ninvocation of Sweden as an ideal state brings us back to what I found to
\nbe the most interesting tidbit in the Economist piece:  <\/p>\n

“Sweden is not
\nquite the paragon that its fans imagine, despite its family-friendly
\nemployment policies. Only 1.5% of senior managers are women, compared
\nwith 11% in America<\/b>. Three-quarters of Swedish women work in the public
\nsector; three-quarters of men work in the private sector.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When rumors of the “mancession” started circulating in September, Atlantic Business’ Derek Thompson theorized<\/a>
\nthat more men than women were losing their jobs because women happened
\nto work primarily in sectors that have seen a lot of growth over the
\npast decade–including during the recession–like health care, education,
\nand government. Largely male sectors like manufacturing and
\nconstruction, on the other hand, have been decimated by the financial
\ncollapse. <\/p>\n

Why would the public sector attract more women? The Economist says
\n“traditionally ‘female’ jobs such as teaching mix well with motherhood
\nbecause wages do not rise much with experience and hours are relatively
\nlight.” This might explain why women gravitate toward the public
\nsector, but it doesn’t justify the trend. As Latoya Peterson at Jezebel
\npoints out<\/a>,
\n“Wages not rising generally places severe financial stress on a
\nhousehold–reduced hours are desired by many parents, but the trade off
\n(less cash) is not necessarily welcome.” On that note,
\nmancession-denouncers should remember that not all jobs are equal.
\nEconomix’s Nancy Folbre suggests<\/a>
\nthat measures of employment equality should take into account the fact
\nthat women are twice as likely as men to work part-time. <\/p>\n

As more women earn undergraduate and graduate degrees and begin to
\ninfiltrate traditionally male spheres like science and management, one
\nwould expect their titles and wages to catch up. But as the allure of
\npublic-sector and part-time work reveals, women make professional
\nchoices based on more than just their qualifications. <\/p>\n

So yes, it could get worse than working for the legendarily munificent
\nSwedish government. But I find it hard to believe that three-quarters
\nof Swedish women would rather stick to the middling public wage track
\nthan join their husbands on the private payroll. Once women no longer
\nhave to choose between professional and reproductive output, I’ll be
\nmore inclined to believe that “we did it.”


\n

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Heralding the triumph of women in the workforce last week, the Economist reported that women not only make up the majority of professional workers in many countries, but also that they earn nearly 60 percent of university degrees in America and Europe. Reinforcing the case for the Great Recession being a Great “Mancession,” the article […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2670,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2670"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}