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Women in the workforce: Changing representations of the female demographic

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Once upon a time, there was a women.
She was taught how to cook, clean and look after children. When she grew up, she got married and cooked, cleaned and looked after her children. The End.

Image result for working population of women over time
Fig 1 (Source: Statistics Canada)
That is essentially a summary of what society thought (for a good chunk of recorded history) was the sole purpose of women, to take care of the house, and to raise the kids. However, in recent years, there has been an increasing number of women becoming the primary bread-winners of their family and an even larger number of women entering the workforce (Fig 1). Such a big shift in society may be associated with the rise of many feminists (not just women, men too) and simply a lot of women are standing up for themselves, saying that the society's beliefs shouldn't decide the outcome of their lives: they should. However, despite such shifts, in even Australia there is still supposedly a wage gap between women and men of 15.3% (ABS). Though this is probably not completely caused by discrimination in the workforce, it still doesn't make sense why it hasn't been almost nullified as women may have certain benefits over men in areas such as organisation, quite a useful asset for the majority of businesses and corporations. Another reason for such a trend is likely that most women are more attracted to lower-paying jobs, mainly part-time jobs.

Looking at the problem from a different point of view: evolution points at women as the ones to give birth to the child and bring them up, a trend common in many species of the animal kingdom. They were specifically designed by nature over millennia to the most efficient child-bearer. However, humans have come a long way from the times of old and now rather than relying on nature for survival we have become a much more self sustaining species and have figured out how to do many things even the forces of nature can't do.

In this course, it will be interesting to find out how shifts in humanity have and will affect the society's representation of the female demographic.

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