Around the world and through history, immense changes have taken place in the roles of men and women, and the relationship between work and family. More often than not, it is the women who somehow suffer the most whenever these changes happen.
From the 1800s till today, in the idea of the male playing the “good provider role”, men who fail to live up to this role have the option of deserting their families because they cannot provide for them. In a sense, they have more privileges relative to the women. They can move and start over, while the women are left to raise families with no source of income and little support.
The changing global economy is displacing men who are from lower income group and of the working class and rely on strong backs and arms with industrial automation and mechanization. Women are becoming more employable than men in say, assembly or textile plants. They have limitless patience and are willing to work without complaint. The men can only take up odd jobs. As such, women become the major wage earner of the family. The men also find it difficult to step into traditionally female roles – child care and domestic work – or, being a “househusband”. As such women still mend these tasks and have a double burden. In addition, women are the subjects of family abuse when these displaced men take their frustration and violence out on their wives or sisters.
Even when women go out to work, they face discrimination and handicaps. Women around the world face relatively larger barriers in gaining access to skilled positions in the labour market. Data from the International Labour Office for 1995 show that even in the 30 most developed countries in the world, the average percentage of female managers is less than 30%. For Africa and Asia, rates are lower than 15% (Esteve-Volart, 2004).
A report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has said women across the OECD countries are 20% less likely than men to find a paid job, and they earn on average 17% less. Similar gaps are found for ethnic minorities throughout the OECD. The authors attributed one-third of the wage gap between the sexes and 8% of the difference in gender employment rates to discrimination. In Japan its large reserve of well-educated female workers is squandered. Only 67.4% of Japanese women aged 25 to 54 have a job, compared with 93% of males in the same age cohort. Even when hired, Japanese women can expect to receive lower pay than their male colleagues. South Korea was found to have the widest wage differential between men and women. On average, pay for Korean women is about 61% of what the opposite sex earns (Chen, 2008).
With the phenomenon of rising divorce rates after having children, and pre-marital pregnancies, single parenting is the single greatest risk factor for poverty in the US. Single mums are more likely to face poverty than single dads (Sernau, 2006). Births to teens are increasingly to unmarried teens. A teen unmarried mother is likely to be lowly-educated and unprepared for parenthood.
References
Esteve-Volart, Berta. 2004. http://209.85.175.104/search?q=cache:g5aJM89e1xkJ:www.lse.ac.uk/collections/pressAndInformationOffice/newsAndEvents/archives/2004/esteve-volart.doc+women+discrimination+labor&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=sg&client=firefox-a
Sernau, Scott, 2006, Global Problems: The Search for Equity, Peace and Sustainability, Pearson Education
http://www.forbes.com/markets/2008/07/03/japan-employment-gendergap-markets-econ-cx_jc_0703markets03.html
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