In the past, women were denied access to the workforce, until in the industrialized modern days. They were denied access to higher education and this made them not to be in a position to get professional occupations. Their work was to take care of their families. But today, many women are no longer satisfied with staying at home and looking after their families, as a result, there is an increasing number of women joining the workforce. This is because women feel the need of being independent especially in financial terms. In the past, women were so discriminated against by men because they used to depend on their fathers or husbands for the provision of everything at home, women were never given a chance to prove to the community that they can support themselves and also be useful. Therefore, women want to work nowadays so that they can be seen as equal to men and not be seen as inferior people. They want to have their own money, be in a position to provide their food, and shelter without being too much dependent on men, and also be seen as superior people in the world.
Another cause for many women joining the workforce is that nowadays many women are too ambitious and they want to do something that they like, to feel a sense of accomplishment in life. Thus staying at home and looking after the family alone may not be satisfying. In the past, they were encouraged to get married early and not pursue higher education and these made women who had the ambition to be so unhappy.
They want to reduce stress and the monotony of doing the same things day in day out without any pay, there are no serious or new challenges encountered at home, and also there is no advancement like in the real career. Thus to reduce this monotony and get advanced in life, many women are now joining the workforce hence the increase in the number of women in the workforce.
There is an increasing number of women in the workforce because many women today have careers of their own and thus after pursuing through, they are in a position to get employed just like men in different companies or organizations. It is not like in the past where women were denied a chance to have careers because it was said that a place of woman is in the kitchen, which means staying at home doing the usual house chores and taking care of her husband and the children.
Another cause for the increasing number of women in the workforce is that many women today have a chance and a right to higher education, which as result leads them to acquire well-paid and higher professional jobs like in medicine and even law. Even those women who have lower education are given chances to work as secretaries, clerks, and office massagers. For instance, we have many women today joining colleges and universities; this motivates them to search for jobs after studying rather than staying at home doing nothing serious and waiting for men to be the breadwinners of their families.
There are effects experienced when most women join the workforce, these include poor child and home care. As women spend more time out working in different organizations, children are most of the time left alone at home with no care. And as a result, there is a poor upbringing of children. According to (Denise, p. 34) it’s always a great challenge for women to be involved in the workforce at the same time playing the role of housewife, thus many women feel exhausted and this results in poor home care if the woman does not program herself well.
Another effect is that it results in competition at workplaces. Men may feel that women are out to compete with them and thus they end up taking great risks just to ensure that no woman is above them.
In conclusion, many women are no more staying at home but increasingly joining the workforce, it has not been easy though because women still earn less than men, work long hours and continue to have the same responsibilities at home as before they got employed and they do face the great challenges of balancing between work and home. Women need to be empowered even more to join the workforce because this is beneficial to the women themselves, their families, and the organizations they work for.
Works cited
Cooper, Denise. Workplace that Work: Creating a workplace Culture That Attracts, Retains & Promotes Women.Havard University: Queens Printers, 2003.