User:Tracy zhang322/Women in the workforce

Lead
Due to this unexpected pandemic, Covid-19, working women suffered huge crisis. Based on the global statistics, women are losing 24% more jobs than men during Covid-19 period. In 2020, the rate of participation of women is 46.9%. Compared to 1990, the rate decreased 4.1%. However, the rate of participation on men is 74% in 2020. Among all the employed people, women only takes 38.8%. In addition, the unpaid work needs to be paid attention. Unpaid works like cooking, cleaning, and taking care of family member especially kids are finished mostly by women. According to statistics, there are 21% women, which is 606 million, doing the unpaid works. There are only 1.5%men, which is 41 million, doing the unpaid works.

Women in workforce leadership
Of all the chair level positions, there are only 14.6% women. In the directorships level positions, there are only 28.1% women. For the CEOs level positions, there are only 18.3% women. Among the key management personnel level positions, there are only 32.5% women. In the greatest 500 companies around the world, there are only 13 women in the CEOs level positions in 2020.

Barriers to equal participation
According to the statistics of Australian, women are up to 47.4% among all the paid workers. Of all the working women, 26.1% of them are working full-time and the rest of them are working part-time. In 2021, the rate of participating working for women is up to 61.4%, which is very close to 70.9% for men. The rate of participation of women and men are different, and the wage is also different. The average wage for full-time working women is less 14.2% than the average wage for full-time working men. The average wage for part-time working women is less 12.1% than the average wage for part-time working men.

In the survey of 2014, there were 67% married women quit theirs jobs because they need to take care of their children. Based on studies, scholars find that there are three main reasons women quit their jobs. They are the responsibility of raising family, unable to balance their life and working, and the responsibility of taking care of family member. For the married working women, they actually are taking three times family responsibilities compared to men. They are doing the paid work and unpaid work at the same time, which is very stressful and frustrated. Due to the social and cultural expectations, women are more willing to sacrifice their jobs to take care of the whole family. The factors influenced married women are mainly caused by paid work. For example, the paid work cannot supply enough salary and create too much stress. The discrimination that married women are facing in workplace is also an inevitable aspect. It is often to see that some mothers are reducing the quality or quantity of work because of family members. There are 22% mothers at home got graduate degree, and there are 86% of them quit jobs because of the inflexible working schedule and overloaded tasks. Based on investigations and interviews, many mothers states that they have the guilt of not having enough time for taking care of children. This is forcing them to leave the workplace. Overall, factors that mainly impacted married working women are social expected family role and the lack of the support from workplace.

Access to education and training
Access to higher education is a important topic within women in the workforce.

Higher education is a key access for women to get a professional jobs and to improve social status. It can be shown in two different ways. Firstly, the knowledge and skills learned from higher educations can help women gaining powers more easily and efficiently compared to women who does not have access to higher education. Secondly, any certificates or diplomas got from higher education can be the minimum standard and requirement of employers. All the functions, skills, and outcomes of higher education are helpful In 2016, United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization released a set of statistics that shows the changes about the proportion of higher educated women around the world in the past 40 years. In North America and Europe, the proportion increased from 39% to 56.4%. In East Asia and Pacific, the proportion increased from 34% to 51.3%. In Latin America and Caribbean, the proportion increased from 35% to 56.3%. In South ans West Asia, the proportion increased from 21% to 32.8%. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion increased from 22% to 45.6%. Overall, it shows that there are more and more women attend higher education all over the world. Based on Australian statistics, there are 92.5% women achieve year 12 education between age 20 to 24, which is higher than 87.5% of men at the same age period. There are 48.3% women achieve bachelor degree higher education between age 25 to 29, which is higher than 36.1% of men at the same age period.

Impact issues of female participation in the workforce
Economic growth is related to female labor. The average of female labor force participation is up to 42.34%, which creates important effect on annual GDP. The average of school enrollment in primary level is 80%, which has positive effect on annual GDP. The fertility average rate is a crucial variable for annual GDP. Along with more and more women got higher education, the fertility and mortality rate are decreasing.