Recently in Working Women Category

Source: NPR, 2010

Stories include:
- Diversity Efforts Uneven In U.S. Companies
- The Promise Of Diversity Is Yet To Be Fulfilled
- Introspection After Allegations Of Discrimination
- In-House Resource Groups Can Help And Harm
- Defining Diversity: Beyond Race And Gender
- Gay In The Office: The Last Frontier Of Workplace Equality
- 'Mad Men' Haven't Changed Much Since The 1960s
- Should 'The Office' Be Used In HR Training?

Source: Phoebe Taubman, American Constitution Society, Issue Brief, December 2009

From the summary:
ACS is pleased to distribute "Free Riding on Families: Why the American Workplace Needs to Change and How to Do It," an Issue Brief by Phoebe Taubman, an Equal Justice Works Fellow with A Better Balance: The Work and Family Legal Center, based in New York City. Today's fast-paced economy relies on many different resources, including electricity, fuel, technology, and the labor of our workers, among many others. Ms. Taubman argues, though, that there is one critical resource whose value we do not fully recognize, and without which our economy would founder: the unpaid work of caring for our families. Whether it is the education and care of the next generation or the comfort and care of the elderly, this work produces extensive benefits for society and we could not go on without it. Ms. Taubman, employing a variety of statistics, discusses the staggering costs imposed on unpaid caregivers, most of whom are women, and on their families, companies, and society as a whole. She contends that, "[f]or a country whose politicians tout family values, the United States has done little to confront these costs and support the critical work that families provide."

Source: Nicole Allen, Atlantic - Business, January 12, 2010

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 cites an unemployment rate of 8.6 percent for women but 11.2 percent for men.


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.

Source: Orit Gadiesh and Julie Coffman, HarvardBusiness.org, The Conversation, January 7, 2010

"The quest for gender parity in the workforce might be the least understood obstacle facing business now. To read recent press accounts, the battle for gender equality in the workplace has been all but won. [. . .] But these statistics mask a problem that companies have made little progress toward solving over the past decade: Women continue to drop out of the workforce in increasing numbers and many don't seem to find their way back -- even when they want to."

Source: Economist, Vol. 394 no. 8663, January 2, 2009
(subscription required)

Across the rich world more women are working than ever before. Coping with this change will be one of the great challenges of the coming decades.

The economic empowerment of women across the rich world is one of the most remarkable revolutions of the past 50 years. It is remarkable because of the extent of the change: millions of people who were once dependent on men have taken control of their own economic fates. It is remarkable also because it has produced so little friction: a change that affects the most intimate aspects of people's identities has been widely welcomed by men as well as women. Dramatic social change seldom takes such a benign form.

Yet even benign change can come with a sting in its tail. Social arrangements have not caught up with economic changes. Many children have paid a price for the rise of the two-income household. Many women--and indeed many men--feel that they are caught in an ever-tightening tangle of commitments. If the empowerment of women was one of the great changes of the past 50 years, dealing with its social consequences will be one of the great challenges of the next 50.

Source: Economist, Vol. 394 no. 8663, January 2, 2009
(subscription required)

The rich world's quiet revolution: women are gradually taking over the workplace.

At a time when the world is short of causes for celebration, here is a candidate: within the next few months women will cross the 50% threshold and become the majority of the American workforce. Women already make up the majority of university graduates in the OECD countries and the majority of professional workers in several rich countries, including the United States. Women run many of the world's great companies, from PepsiCo in America to Areva in France.

Source: National Alliance for Caregiving in Collaboration with AARP; Funded by The MetLife Foundation, December 2009

From the summary:
Caregiving is still mostly a woman's job and many women are putting their career and financial futures on hold as they juggle part-time caregiving and full-time job requirements. This is the reality reported in Caregiving in the U.S. 2009, the most comprehensive examination to date of caregiving in America. The first national profile of caregivers, Family Caregiving in the U.S. was published in 1997, and an updated version of the study, Caregiving in the U.S., was reported in 2004.

The sweeping 2009 study of the legions of people caring for younger adults, older adults, and children with special needs reveals that 29 percent of the U.S. adult population, or 65.7 million people, are caregivers, including 31 percent of all households. These caregivers provide an average of 20 hours of care per week. The 2009 reports also begin to trend the findings from all three waves of the study.

Source: Kathleen Deveny, Newsweek, December 4, 2009

With schools winding down for the holidays, the flu season picking up, and unemployment topping 10 percent, anxiety has never been more acute for many working parents. That is especially true of working mothers. America is approaching a milestone: women are about to hold more than 50 percent of jobs for the first time, in part because men have been hit harder by layoffs. And yet women still shoulder the bulk of child-care responsibilities because of retrograde family roles, school-event schedules, and employers' attitudes. All of which can force an otherwise honest woman to fib.

Source: K. D. Hassell, S. G. Brandl, Police Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 4, 2009
(subscription required)

From the abstract:
Reform efforts in many police departments have diversified the workforce, especially with regard to race, sex, and sexual orientation. Research, however, has demonstrated that the assimilation of these officers has not been problem-free. Using data collected from a large, municipal police department, this article examines the workplace experiences of patrol officers and a potential consequence of those experiences: stress. We find that being female and being a racial/ethnic minority brings with it substantially different experiences on the job compared to male and White officers. Our findings also confirm previous research that workplace climate has an effect on workplace stress.

Source: John Schmitt and Kris Warner, Center for Economic and Policy Research, November 2009

From the summary:
Over the last quarter century, the unionized workforce has changed dramatically, according to this new CEPR report. In 2008, union workers reflected trends in the workforce as a whole toward a greater share of women, Latinos, Asian Pacific Americans, older, more-educated workers, and a shift out of manufacturing toward services.

"The view that the typical union worker is a white male manufacturing worker may have been correct a quarter of a century ago, but it's not an accurate description of those in today's labor movement," said John Schmitt, a CEPR Senior Economist and an author of the report.
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