Women, Employment and the Family: Current Debates

Abstract

Throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the participation of women in gainful employment has grown dramatically, not only in the industrialised nations but also in many parts of the Third World, especially those areas that have experienced increasing investment by multinational manufacturing firms with gender-specific hiring policies. In industrial societies, particularly the United States, the rise in women’s labour force participation has been recognised as a major new social trend. In the developing world, the growth in women’s employment has been uneven, being most marked in newly industrialising areas with strong export-oriented manufacturing sectors such as Mexico, Brazil, the Caribbean, and East and Southeast Asia. But even in many poorer nations of Africa and Central America, women’s labour force participation is increasing, even while their formal, paid employment, and their incomes from such employment, may be stagnating or declining. Between 1985 and 2000, the female labour force is expected to increase faster than the male labour force in the more industrialised parts of Latin America, and to grow at the same rate as the male in East Asia and less industrial Latin America. In Africa, however, the male labour force is expected to increase faster than the female (UNESCO, 1986, p. 13).