Women and Business Back to questions

• Women account for fewer than two per cent of top executive positions and even in these positions they earn less than men. 
• Of the top 1,000 US companies only two are headed by women. 
• The International Labour Organization estimates that at the present rate of progress it would take 475 years for parity to be achieved between men and women in top-level managerial and administrative positions.

Women and maternity Back to questions

• The US is one of only six nations (from a total of 152 surveyed) that has no legal requirement for maternity leave. Under current US law women are entitled to 12 weeks’ leave without pay. But for many this is unaffordable and adds stress to the adjustment of having a new child. 

Women and work Back to questions

• Women do 66% of the world’s work. 
• Women who work in the formal economy are grouped in part-time, low-paid jobs which are often temporary. Their wages are 30% to 40% less than those of men for comparable work. 
• In Western countries the average housewife does about 3,000 unsalaried hours of housework a year 

Women and men Back to questions

• In Ghana some curious statistics have emerged from the fact that more than 30 per cent of married couples are not living together. When husbands and wives live together men work six hours less per week than they would if they lived on their own. For women, however, living with husbands means five hours more work than living without them.

Women and time Back to questions

• Women work as much or more than men everywhere in the world - as much as 13 hours a week more in Africa and Asia. 
• Before 1975 women and men in Western Europe worked (paid and unpaid) similar hours. Now women work 5-6 hours more than men per week. In Eastern Europe they work 7 hours more than men. 
• Women in Pakistan spend an average of 63 hours a week on domestic work. 
• Carrying water in Tanzania takes 4 hours of a woman’s time every day. 
• Grinding grain, by hand, for a family in Mexico takes between 4 and 6 hours a day. 
• In Indonesia women spend over 3 hours a day just preparing food. 
• Housewives in Australia do between 50 and 80 hours of housework a week. 
• One survey in the US put the figure even higher, at 99.6 hours a week. 
• Women with small children in the UK devote 50 hours a week to child-care alone.

Women and money Back to questions

• The value of women’s unpaid housework as a percentage of GDP is estimated at 23 per cent in the US and 33 per cent in India. 
• When women do the same work as men they get paid 30-40 per cent less pay on average worldwide. 
• Women receive 10% of income earned in the world and own 1% of the world's property. 
• Women’s responsibility for housework prevented them earning $27 billion in overtime payments in the UK in 1987.

Women and careers Back to questions

• In the UK 41% of employed women and 2% of men are working part-time. 
• One in 25 woman teachers in the UK and one in 12 woman nurses has had to abandon her career and now works part-time in a cleaning or catering job13. 
• Housework prevents many women putting in the number of hours necessary for promotion in their careers. Women with careers often have to sacrifice their private lives. 
• Women professionals in the UK are over three times as likely as men to be unmarried. 
• 50% of top women managers in the US are childless. 
• Women in the US are three times as likely as men to interrupt their careers in order to take care of children, typically dropping out for 9 years. A 2-to-4-year break depresses earnings by 13%; a 5 year break by 19%. 
• In 1998 bringing up two children was estimated to cost the average UK woman $188,200 in lost earnings.

Source New Internatiuonalist magazine

Richard Turner 1004