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