These 10 charts show how women's economic situation has changed over the years
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- March 8 is International Women's Day, and March is also Women's History Month.
- The following charts highlight the employment situation of women and other economic measures.
- Despite progress made, there's more that can be done to support women, such as having paid medical leave.
Women's History Month, observed every March, is a time to celebrate women, to highlight the advances women have made, and to showcase the gaps in progress and the obstacles women still face that need to be addressed.
March is not only Women's History Month, but March 8 is International Women's Day. Later this month on March 15 is Equal Pay Day, highlighting the pay gap between men and women.
"Women's History Month is a reminder of the great deal of progress women have made," Maggie Jo Buchanan, senior director of the Women's Initiative at the Center for American Progress, told Insider. "It should also serve as a moment of reflection for the fact that we do know the overwhelming majority of caregivers in this country are women and the need to create an economy that supports women — both at work, at home, and every facet of their lives."
Here are 10 charts that highlight US data for women in key economic metrics and other measures:
The labor force participation rate for women aged 20 and over was 58.0% in February 2022, still below where it was before the pandemic. There's over 1.1 million fewer women aged 20 and over in the labor force than there were as of February 2022.
For men, the rate is also still lower than its pre-pandemic rate, but sits higher than women, at 70.6% as of February 2022.
Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, said flexibility is one key way to hire and retain women in jobs.
"What works well for women is a solution for everyone," she said. "Because if you can create a workforce where there's equity, where people are paid for their time and where there is flexibility, where there is skill enhancement in development, that doesn't just benefit women."
"Redesigning workplace policies in a way that promotes women, promotes the labor force in general," she added.
Jasmine Tucker, director of research at the National Women's Law Center, said a reason for the difference between the labor force participation rate between men and women is in part because women may drop out of the labor force to take care of children. She gave the example of a man and a woman household where both are employed.
"There's all of these sort of baked in inequities that are making it so that she's going to be the more likely person to leave," Tucker said, such as men maybe making more because of the pay gap. She added that if a woman does come back in this scenario, she may rejoin the labor force with a lower-paying job as she may be overlooked by companies.
Looking at the labor force participation rates of women with children under 3 years old, that rate is notably less than that of men with children under 3 years old — 63.3% and 93.5% in 2020 respectively.
Richardson said affordable childcare is a must, as childcare can be a large expense eating up paychecks. Childcare, in some cases, can be more than rent or mortgage payments, she added.
She said "what we have to do is make sure that childcare is manageable so women's decision, whether to work or not, is not simply based on can they make more. Can they keep up with the cost of childcare?"
Others things that can help increase the labor force participation rate are paid family and medical leave as well as work flexibility, Buchanan said.
"These are sort of some of the backbones that'll help caregivers, whether of small children or ailing parents, the ability to structure their caregiving and their work at the same time," Buchanan said.
Married mothers spend more time on more household work a day than fathers, regardless of whether they're full-time employed or not employed.
The pandemic has been tough on working moms, whether they are working part- or full-time jobs. And with care responsibilities mainly falling on women, this has impacted some women's employment status during the pandemic.
"One thing we know is women are caretakers and especially women of color are in caregiving roles in their employment," Buchanan said. Some thing policymakers could do then, she said, is having affordable childcare, universal preschool, and paid family and medical leave.
Although the unemployment rates of men and women have been quite similar over time, the gap between the two widened early on in the pandemic.
"Overall, the pandemic recession was somewhat unusual in that it disproportionately affected the occupations in which women, particularly women of color, work," Rose Khattar, associate director of rapid response and analysis at the Center for American Progress, told Insider in an email. "That meant that unlike the Great Recession and other recessions, women experienced much higher unemployment rates when the pandemic hit initially."
The unemployment rate for women aged 20 and over has been 3.6% for three consecutive months based on the latest data for February 2022 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate for men in this age group in February wasn't that different from the rate of women, at 3.5%.
Khattar told Insider in an email that, Black women have seen higher unemployment rates during recessions.
"In fact, there has never been a time where Black women's unemployment rate has not exceeded that of white men or white women," Khattar said. "The intersection of systemic racism and sexism means that Black women have different experiences in the labor market that many topline unemployment analyses render invisible."
The unemployment rate for white women is half that of Black women as of February 2022, with non-seasonally-adjusted rates of 3.2% and 6.2% respectively.
Buchanan said "even before the pandemic hit women, especially those with lower incomes and women of color, face really unique economic risks and hardships."
"The pandemic only exacerbated these challenges," Buchanan added. "And so as a result, these same groups of women have experienced the slowest recovery. So what it means is we need to invest in women and their jobs and their ability to care for their families to make sure all women can continue progress and gain economic security."
The above chart shows that the employment-population ratio for men, or the share of men that currently have a job, was 65.7% in February 2022. For women, the ratio was 54.4% in February 2022.
Historically, a higher share of men have been employed than women, but the gap has broadly narrowed over the decades. The ratio for women was 30.9% in January 1948. On the other hand, the ratio for men is actually lower than decades earlier. In the beginning of 1948, it was 83.8%.
The above chart shows Black women made about 64% of what non-Hispanic white men made in 2020. For non-Hispanic white women, they made 79% of what non-Hispanic white earned.
Women make 83% of what men earn, according to 2020 data from the Census Bureau of full-time, year-round workers. Khattar said occupational segregation and unpaid hours in caregiving are are two reasons behind the overall pay gap between men and women. Additionally, Tucker said racism and sexism are reasons behind the gap between white men and women of color.
"When it comes to the gender wage gap, we can strengthen existing equal pay protections, combat pay discrimination," Buchanan said.
She also said the "the economy wasn't working for women even before COVID-19 hit."
"So in the long-term, it's going to be essential to improve job quality overall for women to ensure their long-term economic security," she said.
Tucker said making it easier for women to unionize could help because pay gaps are smaller in union jobs. She added employers also need to examine how and who they promote.
"Women are over-represented in lower paying jobs and, as they age, the pay gap widens even more," Earlene K.P. Dowell, program analyst at the Census Bureau, wrote in a post.
According to data from the Annual Business Survey, roughly 21% of the 5,771,292 businesses with employees other than the owner in 2019 were women-owned.
As seen in the chart, there were fewer minority-owned businesses compared to non-minority businesses for both men and women.
Since the above chart's about employer businesses, it only shows a fraction of businesses owned by women in the US. The National Women's Business Council wrote in a press release about 2018 Annual Business Survey that the "data accounts for only 10% of women-owned firms in the U.S., as the overwhelming majority are nonemployer businesses (those without employees)."
Nonemployer business data from 2018 shows "41.0% (10.9 million) of businesses without paid employees were owned by women," according to a Census Bureau press release.
When looking at the makeup of workers by industry, it's clear women are more represented in some industries than others. For instance, the majority of workers in education and health services are women. This isn't the case in the construction industry, as seen in the above chart.
More women are needed in skilled trade jobs. One issue could be women are unaware of the job prospects or benefits of these jobs.
Just over half of workers in leisure and hospitality are women. Richardson said we need people in jobs like leisure and hospitality and healthcare jobs, but need these jobs "to be less vulnerable and susceptible to the whims of economic forces than they were before." Things like better pay, flexibility, and other benefits in these industries would be important, she noted.
Additionally, Tucker said there needs to be more women in the C-suite. For instance, she said there's a lot of women in healthcare jobs like as nurses and home health aides, but not as much in manager positions in healthcare.
Tucker said "the policies in the workplace are not reflecting their needs, and that's going to cause them to leave, or to go find new work, or to drop out of the labor force entirely."
Richardson also said less than a quarter of the top managerial positions are women.
"There's still plenty of work to be done in making sure that women are promoted to manager-level employment, plenty of work to be done to just get the million plus women missing from the labor market back into the labor market, and plenty to be done to make sure that opportunities are available across industries," Richardson said.
In addition to the above chart showing the differences in educational attainment for men and women based on the American Community Survey, other data points highlight the progress women have made in education.
"Women first received more than half of the bachelor's degrees awarded in the 1981-82 academic year; today they earn about 57% of bachelor's degrees," Pew Research Center's Richard Fry wrote in a 2019 post. "The number of college-educated women in the adult population (ages 25 and older) surpassed the number of college-educated men in 2007."
Data from the 2020 to 2021 academic year also highlight the achievements made for women's college enrollment.
"According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, at the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, with men at 40.5%," according to the National Student Clearinghouse. "These numbers represent an all-time high for women and an all-time low for men."
Despite a record high, the cost of college is one hurdle to completing college education. A Pew Research Center survey found 44% of women and 39% of men reported a large reason they don't have a four-year college degree is simply because they can't afford it.
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