while he was overseas during
World War I. During wartime, labour shortages can open employment opportunities for women in jobs traditionally held by men.
Survival Feminisation of survival is a term that feminists use to describe a social condition where women are forced into inhumane conditions for the survival of themselves and their families. In 1888, the government of
Canada decided to invite skilled Chinese men to work in a gold rush and the
Canadian Pacific Railway to reduce the cost of labour wages and to make these projects affordable. The Chinese were motivated by desires to leave China and to earn higher wages. Although these immigrants were earning a higher compensation in Canada compared to that in China, they experienced exclusion and
occupational inequality. Even though the issue of racial exclusion is currently desensitised, there are workers who encounter violence and abuse in their working environment, a majority of which are women. Exporting labour to developed countries is still booming since it creates economic growth and diversity. The globalisation of labour eases the government debts and unemployment rates of developing countries. Women, especially in southeast Asian countries, are attracted to this money-making opportunity. The mostly poor and low-wage women were often considered burdens rather than resources, but now an increasing number of women are earning a profit and securing government revenues. Several developing countries in southeast Asia, especially the Philippines, have seen the emergence of exporting labour to developed countries due to high foreign debt and unemployment. The open employment for middle-class women catalyses the growing use of domestic workers for household cleaning and childcare. There has been a complexity in the modern economy with women's responsibility at home and at work. Cultural theories maintain that lower wages in female-dominated occupations are the product of societal bias against the work typically carried out by women and that the sex composition of occupations affects wages directly. In contrast, recent human capital theories maintain that the wage penalties associated with working in female-dominated occupations result from different requirements in specialised training and that the effect is indirect. Many feminist scholars insist that sexual difference is the primary reason for differences between both sexes in the labour market outcomes. Women face discrimination in the workplace, such as the "
glass ceiling," although female participation in the labour market has increased markedly during the past twenty years. However, even with increased participation in the labour force and the high levels of commitment that women give to their workplace, women's work is still undervalued. Additionally, many times a woman's work schedule is structured in such a way that it conflicts with her care-giving responsibilities. One way in which people have tried to help working women is through legislation. In late 2003, Norway passed a law that advocated for forty per cent of representation of gender public board companies. Additionally, the difficulty of achieving senior and executive level positions is due to the practice of utilising "male" characteristics as the standard expectation when assessing, hiring, and promoting women workers. Despite the phenomenon, women have proven to be beneficial in business leadership. Researches have found that improvements within firm value, financial performance, economic growth, innovation, and philanthropy has been due to the inclusion of women leadership within companies. On the other side, something that is often ignored is the "glass escalator", in which a man enters a female-dominated workplace and is quickly promoted through the ranks. Several fields such as education, nursing, and social work demonstrate this phenomenon. Many factors affect this outcome, such as societal pressure on men and women alike to conform to gender roles, i.e., men seeking managerial positions and women seeking more domestic roles. Also, even within female-dominated professions, men are usually the ones making promotion decisions. Despite these setbacks, women have been performing their jobs well. Women make up 40.9% of the American workforce, and they are CEOs of some of the largest companies such as
PepsiCo,
Archer Daniels Midland, and
W. L. Gore & Associates. As a result, women are underrepresented in science-related occupations due to the gendered interactions early in life. Researchers claim that the segregation of men and women into different occupations is the principal reason for earning differences between men and women. There is an under-representation of women in the
STEM fields. According to a study done by the
U.S. Department of Commerce, in the United States women account for approximately twenty-four per cent of the STEM workforce, while making up forty-eight per cent of the overall workforce. Women are earning the same number of bachelor's degrees as men but only account for thirty per cent of STEM degrees. However, women are disproportionately represented in different specialties in comparison to men. In
surgical specialties, women represent 3.5% compared to 16% representation of men. In
general practice, women represent 47% compared to 37% representation of men. Additionally, researchers claim that women are deterred from pursuing certain clinical specialties due to difficulties of
indirect discrimination such as a male dominated work culture,
gender stereotypes, and unsocial hours. Despite these barriers, women in healthcare professions have proven to deliver better health intervention and health care system savings in comparison to their male counterparts. The wage gap with in STEM jobs is smaller than in non-STEM jobs. Within these career fields, there is a pattern of sexist hiring practices that lead to less women being hired in these fields. In 1981 the number of women participating in collegiate sports was 74,329, and by 2001, that number increased to 150,916. In addition, the number of female participants have increased from about twenty-five per cent of the student athlete population to forty-two per cent. Before 1972 and the passage of Title IX, women were, for the most part, absent from sports in high school. In 1972 only one in twenty-seven women participated in high school sports, but by 1998 that statistic became one in three. Following the passage of Title IX, the number of girls participating in athletics rose from 294,015 to 817,073. After only six years that number increased even more to over two million girls getting involved in high school sports. Prior to 1972 girls only made up seven per cent of student athletes and that number rose to thirty-two per cent in 1978. == Education sector ==