Working Women, the Government, and Politics

Working Women, the Government, and Politics

Working women in America are in a difficult and complex state. Women in the workforce are encouraged to compete "like men," which conflicts with the demand for their time during "the second shift". Complete dedication is expected both in the workplace and in the home, and little support is provided by the opposite sex and the government. If the government acquired a larger responsibility for working families, it could implement several policies that have already proven to alleviate the burden on working women and promote gender equality in other industrialized nations.

In recent decades, there has been a visible influx of women in the workforce-many of whom are also mothers. In 1975, forty-seven percent of all American mothers with children under the age eighteen worked for pay, and by the year 2000, this number climbed to seventy-three percent. However, the largest jump in employment occurred in women with very small children; in 1975 thirty-four percent of mothers with children age three and under were employed outside the home, and in 2000, this rate grew to sixty-one percent (Hochschild, XXIV). This growth in numbers can be explained by several factors, but the most substantial is that, in most families, a wife's salary is no longer an option.

Even though women may be sharing the financial burden with their spouses, men have not taken the same steps to share the domestic burden with their partners. This is what accounts for a women's "second shift." Women are expected to fulfill the demands of work and home on their own time. The household chores take a toll on working women with or without children. The hours married women spend performing domestic tasks, hours most men ...

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... such policies, women cannot pursue their right to earn a living in the same way a man could. Earning a living is not a "benefit," equal opportunity for employment is not a "benefit"- but a "right." In our capitalist culture, "the one right of paramount importance to all human beings" is the right to earn a living, and in accordance with the law, any obstruction to a fundamental right must be remedied by the government (Woolf, 101).

Works Cited

Blair-Loy, Mary. Competing Devotions: Career and Family among Women Executives.

(Massachusetts: Harvard UP) 2003.

Gornick, Janet C. and Marcia K. Meyers. Families That Work: Policies for Reconciling

Parenthood and Employment. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation) 2003.

Hochschild Russell, Arlie. The Second Shift. (New York: Penguin Group) 2003.

Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. (New York: Harcourt, Inc.) 1938.