OCTOBER 29, 2009 ISSUE
Women Poised To Make Up 50 Percent of Workforce Nationwide
Locals Far Ahead Of National Trend
The Shriver Report is a study by journalist and California’s First Lady Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress, and details the fact that women are poised to comprise 50 percent of paid workers nationwide. Women have always worked, although mostly not in the paid workforce. Women have always had to be breadwinners, but many have traditionally been excluded from paid employment because of laws and social barriers. Women have still not achieved equal pay—the average for women nationally is around 77 cents compared to the men’s dollar.
For its milestone figure, the report uses the Current Establishment Survey that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts monthly of employment in American businesses. In its most recent results before the publication of The Shriver Report, the bureau reported that for July 2008, 49.9 percent of workers on U.S. payrolls were women.
The report calls this milestone “the greatest transformative force of our time…a permanent change in our culture...[a] seismic shift [that] is impacting every institution in American life.”
The report also states that government, business, faith, education and media institutions have failed to keep up with labor standards and the social insurance system still based on supporting “traditional” families, where the husband works and the wife stays home to care for children.
“The Shriver Report presents an accurate and detailed portrait of American women and families at this transformational moment in our history,” Shriver said in a news release.
She called for policymakers to update policies and practices to address and support the needs of today’s American women, men and families.
The report creates a snapshot of the current reality of what used to be the traditional family. The first and last time women’s roles were examined in such detail was the Presidential Commission on the Status of the American Woman, published October 1963.
Shriver’s report states the “battle of the sexes” is over. “Now it’s negotiations between the sexes.” It examines work, family, household responsibilities, childcare and eldercare thoroughly. Only marginally, however, in a chapter on women’s health does it touch on key issues behind sexual discrimination, such as misogyny, sexual harassment and violence against women, including domestic violence.
The Shriver Report is available only as an eBook download or as print-on-demand by clicking to www.awomansnation.com and clicking on the link in the top right corner.
Local Women Far Ahead Of National Employment Trend
Local statistics indicate that women in Boone were already 2.43 percent ahead of the national trend of participation in the paid workforce in 2000. They may even have reached this year’s national milestone of 50 percent participation some years ago. (See chart) As no recent data by sex are available, it is impossible to know exactly when, or if, local women became a majority in the paid workforce.
The figures on which the chart is based are imperfect: they come from several data sources because statistics relating to women are hard to come by—a common complaint among people trying to measure women’s progress. The chart is based on the most recent figures available – for 2000, for the 28607 zip code and on statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Labor Market Division of the North Carolina Employment Security Commission said current statistics divided by the sexes are not available. While the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics provide data by sex, they required considerable calculation to reach percentages applicable to our area and as they derive from different data sets, the final results can be considered only an indication of the true picture. All data used were was from 2000.
The Year 2000: Local Male and Female Participation in the Paid Workforce Compared with the Nation as a Whole
The data on which these percentages were derived were extracted from Table 2: Employment status of the civilian non-institutional population 16 years and over by sex, 1970-2008 annual averages. Source: Current Population Survey, U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; and from the U.S. Census Bureau, zip code tabulation, Census 2000 Demographic Profile Highlights General Characteristics, Summary File 1 and Summary File 3; and from DP-3, Profile of Selected Economic Characteristics 2000 Geographic Area 28607.
Editor’s note: High Country Press reporter Bernadette Cahill is the author of “Women in the High Country,” published in June. A mixture of articles about women previously published by High Country Press and much new writing, one of the chapters in “Women in the High Country” deals extensively with the ingrained problem of finding statistics about women, which she again encountered in researching this article. Her book is available at Watauga County Public Library, and can also be purchased by contacting Cahill at bernadettecahill1@gmail.com.
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