Celebrating 97 Years of Advocacy for Working Women

"First created during World War I to study women’s employment during and after the war, the Women’s Bureau became a permanent federal government fixture in 1920. Ninety-seven years later, the Bureau remains the sole federal agency designed to advocate on behalf of working women.

Since its inception, the bureau has supported innovative policies and programs designed to address emerging issues affecting working women and create a positive environment for working women and their families.

Women have made great progress over the course of the bureau’s 97-year history, as seen in higher education levels and higher earnings. As it has for nearly a century, the Women’s Bureau will continue working to address the challenges working women experience and raise awareness on key issues and developments affecting women in the workforce

Tracie Sanchez is a policy analyst for the Women’s Bureau.

Editor's note: Photo credits clockwise from top left - Library of Congress, U.S. Labor Department, Library of Congress, Library of Congress and the National Archives. 

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Working Women

12 Stats About Working Women

"Women are Integral to Today’s Workforce

• There are 74.6 million women in the civilian labor force.
• Almost 47 percent of U.S. workers are women.
• More than 39 percent of women work in occupations where women make up at least three-quarters of the workforce.
• Women own close to 10 million businesses, accounting for $1.4 trillion in receipts.
• Female veterans tend to continue their service in the labor force: About 3 out of 10 serve their country as government workers...."

Women and Work

Women at Work
Compilation of recent data on working women by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Women at Work
A March 2011 U.S.Bureau of Labor Statistics report on women in the labor force.

Reversals in the patterns of women’s labor supply in the United States, 1977–2009
"Most analyses of women’s labor force participation in the past 15 years or so have focused on married women. The labor force participation rate of this group increased dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s, as reported by Marisa DiNatale and Stephanie Boraas, and Chinhui Juhn and Simon Potter, among many others. But the labor force participation of married women—especially those with
children—increased only marginally in the 1990s, and began to decline toward the end of that decade. For married women with children, for example, the rate increased from 39.7 percent in 1970 to 66.3 percent in 1990, but then to only 70.6 percent in 2000; the rate was 69.3 percent in 2007. For married mothers with infants, the rate peaked in 1997, at 59.2 percent, and declined to 53.5
percent by 2005..."