Narrow the Gap: Women in Work
Despite the considerable progress that has been made towards achieving gender equality in different fields, certain constraints seem to prevail in the labor market. What are the obstacles that women have to face everyday in working life? In this article, I would like to take stock of the status and conditions of women in the world of work.
The first and biggest challenge women face is stereotypes about gender roles which cause unequal and unfair treatment. For example, in terms of domestic behavior, some people expect that women will stay at home, take care of the children, and cook and clean, while men take care of finances and devote most of their time to building their professional careers "in the world".
In addition to family members, and a section of society who don’t approve women working, another cause of women’s “difficult” situation is linked to the fact that some of them, in particular older women, have a lack of skills, experience, or education. This is the result of , a historical underrepresentation of females, as compared to males, as college students, college professors and administrators around the world. The tendency for males to outnumber females in the higher education field has been persistent in some parts of the world. In Italy in 2016 only 22% of full professors in the Universities were women and 37% among associate professors despite the fact that among students half or even the majority are women. In the U.S. women are also less likely than men to achieve tenure, while women held nearly half (48.9%) of all tenure-track positions in 2015, they held just 38.4% of tenured positions. Women were more likely to be found in lower-ranking academic positions even if they are the majority of students in the U.S. as well.
Fluctuations in women’s participation rate in the labor market have been influenced by economics and society’s expectations of females. Once women enter the labor market, they have to balance between work and family or home. Frequently, women have to face the lack of affordable care for their children or relatives who they can count on for childcare. This situation depends on the welfare system, the type of organizations and assistance provided by the State. Family-supportive policies are crucial: Policies that do not take into consideration work and family responsibilities can lead to lower female labor force participation rates, higher levels of sectoral and occupational segregation, and higher uptake of involuntary part-time work for women, as well as wage and income disparities.
For example, in Italy only 5-6% of children under 3 years old are in nursery schools, compared to 20% in France and 50% of infants (by 9 months old) who are in a regular child care arrangements in the U.S., such as a center-based care arrangement. It is an indication that there continues to be a perception of women as being the caretakers of young children, even with the greater number of women entering the workforce, there is no parallel development of child care structure because the society at large still thinks that women should take on the burden of raising children themselves.
Women also have to deal with unfair treatment at work, or even worse, abuse, harassment and discrimination in the workplace. During 2015-2016 in Italy 8,9% of women have have suffered physical harassment or sexual blackmail at work and at least 25% of women experienced sexual harassment in the workplace in the U.S. in the same period. Experts suspect that these figures under-represent the prevalence of these phenomena in both countries due to underreporting.
Among the most frequent discrimination there is the unequal pay for doing similar work as men, as if work does not have equal value. Another hateful and ongoing kind of discrimination is represented by the presence of the so-called “glass ceiling.” The glass ceiling is a metaphor used to describe an invisible barrier that keeps certain minorities from rising beyond a certain level in a hierarchy. The United States Federal Glass Ceiling Commission defines the glass ceiling as "the unseen, yet unbreakable barrier that keeps minorities and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements."
In the European Union the participation of women in full time employment in 2015 had an average of 39.6%. In Italy this percentage dropped to 30.0% while in Sweden, well-known for its efficient welfare state, the percentage of women in labour market rose to 57.0%. In the same year in the United States the employment rate of women was 53.7%.
It is up to us to identify innovative, effective actions that promote full and lasting gender equality and non-discrimination in the world of work because the world needs to advance gender equality and empower women. Not just for the benefit of women, but for the benefit of all humankind.
