What Women Want from Work — An Introduction

Abstract

The role women play in the paid-employment sector changed dramatically in the closing decades of the last century. More women joined the workforce, they worked for longer before having children and increasingly returned to work afterwards. Women entered occupations that were once considered closed to them, often in considerable numbers; and they climbed to positions previously thought impossible. It is, nevertheless, the case that gendered-occupational segregation, whereby women and men are concentrated into different areas of work (horizontal segregation), and at different levels (vertical segregation), remains a global phenomenon. Women have made some remarkable inroads, but they are still overwhelmingly concentrated in comparatively few occupational areas, and remain under-represented in the highest-paid and most senior and powerful positions.