Rosie’s revolution
Women worldwide are increasingly successful – and increasingly present – in the workforce. This has enormous repercussions for social development and economic growth
Brigitte Miksa
Her name was Rosie, she was diligent and well-behaved – yet she caused upheaval in her own country and then in the rest of the world. Before she was born, women had been largely excluded from the labor force. During the industrial era, laws in many countries had barred married women from signing labor contracts and claiming wages.
But in, Rosie appeared and helped usher in a development that Claudia Goldin, economics professor at Harvard, calls a “quiet revolution.” While women had been present in large numbers in the workforce before, notably in England and Germany during the first world war, the systematic mass drawing in of women into work, regardless of marital status, was to have wide-ranging economic and social consequences.
A RIVETING ROLE MODEL
Since many countries have followed this US trend, it is instructive to examine it. Until the, wage-earning women had mostly been young and unmarried. They worked mainly as servants or in factories. However, in the, more girls started going to high school and college and were better prepared to join the workforce. One of them was ‘Rosie the Riveter.’ This fictional character represented an assembly line worker supporting America’s home front efforts during the second world war.
According to the Encyclopedia of American Economic History , the social movement inspired by Rosie almost doubled the number of working American women from 12 million in to 20 Million in. Having proven their reliability, many of these women remained in the labor force after the World War II, working as secretaries, nurses or as teachers.
Following this example, younger women began to seek employment more actively. This became easier by the approval of the pill for contraceptive use in, which helped postpone child rearing. Plus, the Equal Pay Act of diminished differences in remuneration. As a result, labor force participation of American women rose from 32% in to a peak of 59%. Since then repercussions of the financial crisis lowered the rate, to 57% in August. Across the developed world the proportion of women on the payroll has similarly increased from 48% in, to 64%. In most of these countries the remaining gap between the participation rate for men and women is below 15 percentage points; in the Nordic countries it has shrunk to almost zero.
This revolution that Rosie helped initiate has had enormous repercussions. Millions of extra employees have been introduced to the workforce without the difficulties involved in rearing or importing them. McKinsey, a consultancy firm, estimates that America’s GDP is 25% higher than it would have been without the women who entered the job market over the past four decades. The Global Gender Gap Report , a study by the World Economic Forum, shows a positive correlation between gender equality and competitiveness as well as human development. It concludes that there is “mounting evidence that empowering women means a more efficient use of a nation’s human talent endowment,” which “enhances productivity and economic growth.”
In the future this potential boost to the labor pool will be particularly important for countries with aging societies, where the working population is shrinking while the number of pensioners is rising. Kevin Daly, senior economist at investment bank Goldman Sachs, believes that eliminating the remaining gap between female and male employment rates could increase GDP in the United States by 9%, in the Euro zone by 13% and in Japan by 16%.
Recognizing this potential, governments have tried to encourage women to join the job world. They introduced more flexible maternity and paternity leaves; they extended school hours and afternoon childcare, and they established tax rules that do not discriminate against dual-earner couples. However, female economic emancipation varies across the world. The Global Gender Gap Report calculates a score that combines “participation, remuneration and advancement.” This figure ranges from one (gender parity) to zero. North America’s average is 0.8 – far beyond that for Asia, with less than 0.6, and double that of the Middle East, with about 0.4.
THE POTENTIAL OF MUSLIM WOMEN
Though the report avoids claims of causality, it shows that the female labor force participation rate is particularly low in Islamic countries. In Nigeria it is 40%, in Egypt 24% and in Pakistan only 22%. Yet in South-East Asia the picture is nuanced. In Malaysia, where 60% of the population is Muslim, almost half of working-age women have paid jobs – a relatively high figure for a Muslim-majority country. Malaysia’s non-Muslim neighbors Singapore and Thailand have even higher figures of 60% and 70% respectively.
Malaysian leaders realize the growth potential that women entering the job market can bring, and so launched several associated schemes. On the fiscal front the government introduced a tax deduction on expenditure incurred by companies re-employing women following a career break. It has further boosted the training of childcare workers and opened more than 1,000 additional childcare centers. Finally, The Women Director Program is training 220 women to take on jobs as directors at publicly listed companies.
These efforts are already affecting attitudes of the younger generation in Malaysia. Among women who are older than 60 years, 29% think the family should always be responsible for supporting the elderly – among women aged 18-25 only 18% hold this view. Correspondingly, of women aged 45-54 only 47% have a paid job, while the rate for those aged 25-35 is 65%. The Malaysian Economic Planning Unit, a government agency, expects that a sizeable increase in the number of female workers alone could boost Malaysian GDP by 2% annually until.
The revolution that Rosie started 70 years ago in the United States seems to have now reached Rayhana, at the other end of the world.
