Women’s Role in Employment

Abstract

Like most other developed economies Britain experienced an acceleration in the trend rate of growth in the number and proportion of married women in the work force in the decade up to 1970. Furthermore, in the more advanced countries generally the female labour force is expected to grow by 36 per cent (68 million) in the period 1970–2000, compared with a projected growth of 31 per cent in the male labour force,¹ and Britain will share in this growth. However, over the 100 years between 1851 and 1951 the relative importance of women in the British labour force was remarkably constant. Census of population data show that women comprised approximately 30 per cent of the occupied population throughout the period. Despite this, however, there was a substantial increase in the number of women in the occupied population, which rose from 2.8 million to 7 million over the period and major fluctuations in this pattern occurred on account of the two World Wars.