History of Women at Work

Throughout history, women across the world have played an invaluable role in supplying businesses, services, and goods. Countries that empower women in their economies see greater economic growth and success in all sectors. Without women in the economy, global and regional economic realities would look very different.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution in the US, the household was considered the center of production in society. Both men and women had important roles to play in keeping the household running successfully. However, as industrialization emerged in the US and men increasingly began to work outside the household, the work women did at home became decreasingly valued, despite the important role it played in keeping the economy afloat. Although the Industrial Revolution saw more women working in the manufacturing sector, the dominant ideology was that women should work in the home and domestic work was very time consuming.

Women’s jobs outside the home varied by race and class. For educated middle-class women, respectable work, some of which was teaching, writing, and nursing, was the only avenue available. Thanks to technological innovation, which allowed mass production, working-class women found acceptable employment, mostly in food and textile factories. In some cases, factory work paid better than domestic labor, which appealed to young women. However, this varied, as some factories paid less than domestic work. Women of color worked mainly in domestic service or owned their own business, as there was little factory opportunity for them. Women were essential to factories, but were paid less, worked long hours, and had their efforts to improve their condition stifled.

Pregnant Woman and Young Girl Working in a Mill [1]

Besides factory work, teaching and writing were among the easiest ways for a woman to earn money in the first half of the 19th century. Held to a strict moral code, female teachers were subjected to moral scrutiny and faced social pressure to maintain a respectable image and character. Inappropriate or abnormal behavior resulted in severe reprimand or dismissal. Female teachers had lower salaries than male teachers, though they were performing the same job. This is an example of wage disparity that would persist despite women having equal qualifications as men.

Educational Progress in Virginia[2]

Teaching was seen as a temporary occupation for young women while they waited for marriage. Female teachers were forced to sign contracts that included “marriage clauses,” which ensured they would be forced to quit if they were married. These restrictions were in place to make sure married women focused on the house and home. The clause reinforced the idea that teaching was not a long-term career path, which justified the lower pay for women. However, this undermined female teachers’ authority in the classroom, which led to misbehavior from students, particularly older boys.

Outside of teaching, educated women were journalists, wrote poetry, wrote women’s advice columns, novels, and children’s stories. After the death of her husband, Sarah Josepha Hale became the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book to provide for her children. Margaret Fuller became one of the most famous American journalists during this period. Fuller was a wartime correspondent and ardent abolitionist. Fuller believed women should break out of traditional gender roles to explore new opportunities for themselves, while Hale believed and promoted that women should not have ambition and stay within the home. Published in 1845 by Margaret Fuller, Women in the Nineteenth Century called for women’s liberty and equality while examining the social, political, and cultural constraints placed upon them. Fuller and her family would die a tragic death in a shipwreck in 1850, but her contribution would allow her to be celebrated as a pioneering feminist and intellectual of her time.

Ida Tarbell[3]

Like the world of literature, the 19^th century world of business was seeing rapid changes. Thanks to investigative journalist Ida Tarbell, John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company was exposed as bully to smaller rival businesses, which included Tarbell’s father. In 1904 Tarbell’s exposé was compiled into a two-volume book. Through her investigation, the federal government brought a case against Standard Oil for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act which prevented the formation of monopolies. Standard Oil was court-ordered to break up into 34 separate companies. Rockefeller would describe Tarbell as an angry lady, but she won her crusade and protected the US against monopolies.

Lower-class women built the bulk of the Industrial Revolution. The 1824 Pawtucket Textile Strike, largely considered the first industrial strike in US history, reflected the central role of women in the industrial economy. The Stike began in response to a 25% pay cut to female works at a mill in Rhode Island which caused more than 100 women to walk off the job. The women won the strike and returned to work. In 1825 women organized the first women-only trade union called the United Tailoresses of New York, after being left out of unions by men. In 1831 the union went on an unsuccessful strike which reflects views about women’s labor during the period.

Lowell Mills was seen as a major turning point for labor and for women. Mill work had popped up along the rivers throughout New England. It attracted poor farm women, as the industrialization of mechanized farm equipment had freed up much of female labor on the farm. Girls left home for wages to support their families. While this could damage the reputations of these women, the promise of a wage was persuasive, and mills would work to counter the negative narratives of the reputation of their female workers.

Besides the reputation damage, it could be physically dangerous for women. One girl who worked at the Lowell Mills wrote home, “Last Thursday one girl fell down and broke her neck which caused instant death. She was going in or coming out of the mill and slipped down it being very icy. The same day a man was killed by the [railroad] cars... Last Tuesday we were paid. In all I had six dollars and sixty cents paid $4.68 for board. With the rest I got me a pair of rubbers and a pair of 50.cts shoes…”[1] The rest of the money that she earned, about a dollar and a half, was sent home to her family.

Lowell Mill Girls[4]

The Lowell Mill girls would begin to strike. With the first attempt, the bosses won. The management had enough power and financial resources so that the mills were operating at full capacity within a week. However, in 1836, female wages were cut again, and the second strike caused much disruption but was ultimately unsuccessful. Throughout these setbacks, the mill girls did not surrender. In the 1840s, they pivoted to political action. The Lowell Female Labor Reform Association was established to advocate for shorter 10-hour workdays. Extensive petition campaigning occurred, gathering over 2,000 signatures in 1845, which doubled in the following year. The amassed signatures urged the Massachusetts state legislature to pass a law limiting mill workdays to ten hours. It did not pass.

These efforts spread to other mill towns throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire. “Factory Tracts” were published to expose the mills’ deplorable condition. The different chapters of the Female Labor Reform Association provided testimony before a state legislative committee. Additionally, they campaigned against a state representative who opposed the mill girls’ cause. He was defeated. In 1847, New Hampshire became the first state to establish laws mandating a ten-hour workday, but it was not effectively enforced.

Later, the Muller v. Oregon (1908) case established legal precedent for protective legislation. In 1903, Oregon had made it illegal for employers to keep female factory and laundry workers for over ten hours on the job. The law was challenged by laundry owner, Curt Muller, who believed the law violated his right to freedom of contract under the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case was brought to the Supreme Court in January of 1908. Representing the state of Oregon, Louis Brandeis’s brief argued that the state could curb the freedom of contract to protect the welfare of its citizens. The Brandeis Brief argued that women were “fundamentally weaker” than men (according to physicians at that time) and had “special physical organization” (anatomical and physiological differences). Therefore, the long hours were dangerous to the physical and moral health of women. Working women could suffer from “pelvic disorders” that would prevent the ability to give birth, and lax moral behavior could occur. Women’s well-being was posited alongside the welfare of the country. After six weeks, the Supreme Court upheld the Oregon law, which made women wards of the state.

By 1914, twenty-seven states regulated some aspect of women’s work, whether it was hours, night work, weight limits, or working in dangerous or morally hazardous places (bars/saloons, meter readers for the gas and electric companies, streetcar conductors, and elevator operators, for instance). Fifteen states followed suit with minimum wage laws by 1920 to protect the health and morality of working women. These efforts were supported by women’s competition in the labor market: men. Women reformers, like Florence Kelley, believed that these limits for women would eventually be extended to all workers and protect men; instead, it gave men a competitive advantage in the labor market and made women a liability. In effect, Muller v. Oregon enshrined gender inequity into the law.

The consequence of the protective laws became clear early in 1912. A garment strike in Lawrence, MA, happened when the maximum work week was reduced from 56 to 54 hours for women and children. When the law went into effect at the beginning of the year, thousands of American Woolen Company workers walked off the job in response to losing money from their paychecks. Laborers at American Woolen could not afford less pay due to their living circumstances, which were controlled by the company’s president, William Wood. American Woolen workers lived in the company town in crowded company tenements, and their workplace conditions were not much better. The infant mortality rate in the company tenements was high. Workers had to pay for drinking water and were docked pay for being a minute late to work. The accident rate on the job was high, but the work pace increased. Wood refused to raise workers’ wages to compensate for the missed two hours of work, despite a $3 million profit margin in 1911. While the numbers seem insignificant, thirty to forty cents for the workers was equivalent to four loaves of bread, which meant a lot for people who lived paycheck to paycheck.

The strike was investigated in early March 1912 by Congress. Faced with negative publicity, the American Woolen Company decided to negotiate a settlement with the strikers. The employees received a pay increase ranging from 5 to 25 percent, depending on the job, while those who participated in the strike faced no reprisals from the company. The strike officially lasted nine weeks.

In the ‘roaring 20s, white, middle-class married women were gaining access to new conveniences like vacuum cleaners and washing machines that made housework easier. During this period suburbs grew. Women’s work was equated with homework, and electricity in the home helped facilitate greater ease of housework. Advertisements were targeted towards women in this period, as ads sold these new labor-saving devices. Consumption was tied to ideas of acceptance, success, and social status. Rural women could access these devices and the newest styles of fashion by Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs.

Three women in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance[5]

Women were building empires during this period. America’s first self-made female millionaire, Madame C. J. Walker’s beauty products gave Black women the ability to control their image. The Walker Manufacturing Company’s line of products was designed for Black women. Madame Walker used her fortune to fund scholarships to promote the cause of African American self-help and entrepreneurship.

World War I and World War II transformed women’s roles in the workforce. Women kept the economy moving through war. Labor, goods, and services that women supplied to the local and global economy were desperately needed to maintain the war effort. Poor women moved into better-paying roles as men left to fight, while middle-class women went into the workforce for the first time. When men returned, it was hard for women to leave their posts. One persistent idea about the 1950s is that women returned home, when most chose to pursue degrees and use them in greater numbers than in decades before. The post-war world was forever changed. Women had proven that the economy ran well on their labor.

Women as Consumers in the Economy Today

Women make more purchasing decisions for families than men do. In fact, women represent 85% of global consumer spending, or $31 trillion of spending annually.[6] Women have long been seen as a highly specific demographic for companies to market their products and services to, but women actually make up an incredible majority of consumers and, in this way, have greater purchasing power than men.

Despite this significant consumer power, women face the phenomenon of the “Pink Tax” while shopping for goods that are specifically tailored to them. Traditionally, the “Pink Tax” referred to the extra taxes on essential menstrual care products. However, it has since expanded to explain the incredible price difference between items that are of the same quality but marketed to men and women separately. Generally, in the United States, products for women cost about 7% more than products for men, costing women thousands of extra dollars across their lifetimes.[7] Sometimes, the “Pink Tax” is seen in conjunction with smaller-sized items, so, not only are women paying more for the same quality, but they are also paying more for less.

This economic pattern isn’t just seen with health care and beauty products; it also often applies to toys marketed toward girls versus boys, or even toys of the same make and model that are simply pink instead of blue or red. In this regard, the “Pink Tax” has resounding economic effects on both women individually as well as on their families.

Woman Consumer

Goods and Services Women Supply in Economies Today

Today, there is a significant increase in the way women work and what they supply to the economy. If, collectively, all women workers in the US took just a single day off, the country would lose $21 billion in terms of GDP.[8] This number points to both the necessity of women in the labor market in keeping the United States’ economy afloat and the progress women have made in securing economic and labor gains.

The dominant sector for women workers in the US is Healthcare, Education, Administration, and Literacy (HEAL jobs), where 74% of workers are women.[9] Women also outnumber men in the Retail and Leisure & Hospitality sectors. Women tend to have lower participation in sectors such as Manufacturing, Transportation & Utilities, and Agriculture. These HEAL jobs became “respectable women’s work” during and after the Industrial Revolution because they were seen as extensions of women’s natural caregiving responsibilities. Because male union leaders worked to protect male wages at the expense of women’s, almost all jobs traditionally done by women have been undervalued. Childcare workers, almost all women, earn the equivalent of a cashier or food service worker on average. When traditional women’s work is underpaid across industries, it’s not the difficulty of the job, the risk involved, or the training required to do it—it’s about the gender of the people who traditionally do it.

Teachers are a prime example of underpaid women workers. Employment advertisements in the 19th century stated publicly that female teachers were paid one-third the salary of male teachers! Schools were filled with brilliant and highly educated women whose other respectable alternatives were factory work or domestic servitude. Despite being paid less than men, female teachers into the mid-1990s benefitted from a wage “premium” compared to women in other fields. But in the 1990s, women were welcomed into other higher-paying fields in greater numbers, which changed their circumstances. As more fields opened to women, many left teaching, but they remained the primary labor behind education—women still constitute still three quarters of the profession today. Men, meanwhile, took a major hit in their salaries by becoming teachers. Today, that penalty remains high at 35%.[10] The expectation that teachers’ salaries remain low persists in both public and private schools. In 1960, female teachers had a 14.7% wage premium; by 2021, they had a 17.1% wage penalty.[11] In those six decades, there was a huge negative shift for women teachers, and in 2021, teacher salaries reached an all-time low since the Economic Policy Institute began tracking their data at the turn of the century. Factoring in the vast benefits public employees tend to receive, the EPI found that teachers earn about 20% less nationally than those with similar degrees in other fields, although it varies considerably by state. Nowhere in the US do teachers earn more than their counterparts in other fields.

The pay gap, as it is often called, is the gap between what men earn on average and what women earn on average and is most obvious when researchers get out of fields traditionally done by women and instead look at comparable “male” and “female” fields. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research compared elementary school teachers, the most common female occupation, to software developers, the most common male occupation.^[12] Both jobs require similar degrees, risks, and burdens. Elementary school teachers average $982 in income per week, while software developers made $1,894 per week. The study further showed that female software developers made $200 less per week than their male peers on average!

Motherhood

The Pay Gap

Economists break the gap down to how much money, on average, men make per hour compared to women. The question is not whether there is a pay gap, but what should be done about it and why does it exist? While the pay gap is fueled by discrimination in how society values the types of work women tend to do compared to the type of work men tend to do, it is also notably and flagrantly biased within fields. Many people, blame the challenges women face in workplace advancement on women and their choices. They believe women are choosing to make less— in essence, women to blame for the pay penalty. As an extension, the answer to the question is that nothing should be done about the pay gap because it’s women’s fault that they make less. These people point out that women often give up their high wages when they marry wealthy men. Studies have shown that women, before they have kids, are able to advance in their careers using the same strategies as men and that women are giving up wages for children because of systemic failures that make childcare less accessible and workplaces less flexible for mothers of young children. Many of these elite women return to their careers once their children enter school only to find that the game has changed, their skills are lacking, and their male colleagues have put in many hours in their absence to earn higher hourly salaries: catching up after a hiatus is unlikely. These examples show that parenthood, more than women’s choices change family work dynamics.

Another commonly argued position against the pay gap’s significance is to challenge the math. In his scathing article about the pay gap, a man from the Foundation for Economic Education, a free-market advocacy group, claimed that arguments about the pay gap between men and women are flawed because it averages male and female salaries. He said that looking at the data this way does not account for choices women make, asserting that women on average work 7 hours a day to the 8 hours the average male worker puts in.[13] He said that anyone who works less than someone else should expect to earn less. This ignores the fact that women work more hours a day than men, it’s just that the other hours are in unpaid domestic work. The question then is why would women and their families make choices that lead to women working and therefore earning less? The “why” explains everything and helps find solutions to the pay gap.

In her work which won her the Nobel Prize for Economics, Dr. Claudia Goldin found that while in the past, gaps in wages could be explained by men earning more degrees or working in fields that were paid better, those excuses are no longer valid. Dr. Goldin showed that, “most of the earnings difference is now between men and women in the same jobs… [and occurs] after the birth of a woman’s first child.”[14] This concept is what economists call the “Motherhood Penalty.” Men who have children by contrast receive a pay bump! Women do make choices that contribute to their own invisibility and lower income, but the notion that this is a free choice rather than a constrained and economic one is simply not true. When one adds layers like race, these choices are even more difficult. If all things were equal, why would women earn less? The answer is that the circumstances are not equal.

Harvard researchers, for example, examined data collected from the highly unionized and regulated Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), where wage differences between men and women were virtually unthinkable. The union contract was written in a way to bar a sexist boss from favoring male employees. Workers had access to the same choices that could advance their careers. The study found that male train operators and bus drivers worked about 83% more overtime than their female colleagues and were twice as likely to accept an overtime shift—which pays time-and-a-half—on short notice and that around twice as many women as men never took overtime. The male workers took 48% fewer unpaid hours off under the Family Medical Leave Act each year.[15] Female workers were more likely to take fewer desirable routes if it meant working fewer nights, weekends, and holidays. Parenthood turns out to be an important factor. Fathers were more likely than childless men to want the extra cash from overtime, and mothers were more likely to want time off than childless women.[16]

 His conclusion is actually very similar to those of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), but their analysis of the implications is different: that women’s perceived “choices” are not freely made choices. Families at the peak of their professional careers are also often raising children, and this family choice has a disproportionate impact on the woman’s career: a pay penalty. The Center for American Progress explained:

“Today, many families with young children must make a choice between spending a significant portion of their income on childcare, finding a cheaper, but potentially lower-quality care option, or leaving the workforce altogether to assume full-time childcare duties. Whether due to high cost, limited availability, or inconvenient program hours, childcare challenges are driving parents out of the workforce at an alarming rate. In fact, in 2016 alone, an estimated two million parents made career sacrifices due to problems with childcare.”[17]

Childcare challenges have become a barrier to work, especially for mothers, who disproportionately take on unpaid caregiving responsibilities when their family cannot find or afford childcare. In a 2018 survey conducted by the Center for American Progress, mothers were 40 percent more likely than fathers to report that they had personally felt the negative impact of childcare issues on their careers.[18] Why is it difficult for young families to find childcare? Answer: there is a long history of expecting women’s work to be free and thus underfunding the people who do this vital work.

The IWPR concluded in their expansive study and research into the data of more than 125 occupations that “women’s median earnings are lower than men’s in nearly all occupations, whether they work in occupations predominantly done by women, occupations predominantly done by men, or occupations with a more even mix of men and women.”[19] This was true between men and women of the same race as well. Perhaps the most famous example is that of the US national soccer teams, where women earn substantially less than men. The argument is that the women’s game generates less revenue than the men’s– but this is increasingly not standing up to evidence. The US women’s team earns a higher percentage of revenue than the men’s team does, but the women argue that the commitment and labor are equivalent and should garner equal pay. The argument is about value: how does society value the people who work in it? When people put in equal effort, risk, and time, is there a good reason to deny them similar pay?

The wage gap is closing in part because women are earning more and male wages are stagnating—this is not how anyone wants the gap to close. In 1979, only 13% of women earned more than the median man.[20] Today, it’s 40% which is not perfect equality, but it is an incredible change in such a short amount of time. Men by contrast have seen wages stagnate, and with fewer going to college and getting the skills necessary to compete in an automating world, their career prospects are limited. Since 1980, median earnings for men with only a high school diploma have decreased by 28 percent! As Senior Analyst Richard Reeves puts it, “male jobs have been hit by a one-two punch of automation and free trade” not feminism.[21]

USWNT 2015 World Cup Champions with President Obama[22]

One persistent fallacy, or falsehood, is that “women do not ask” for promotions. But women do ask and are sadly denied at higher rates than men.[23] This myth that women do not ask is used to essentially blame women for their own misfortune of earning less for the same work.

Instead of lamenting the pay gap, there are shining examples of careers in industries where motherhood has less of an impact on women’s wages: Pharmacy. In her book Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey toward Equity, Harvard Professor and Nobel Prize Winner, Dr. Claudia Goldin examined how women across generations addressed the challenge of balancing career and family. In her research, pharmacy emerged as an egalitarian occupation with considerable financial rewards. Female pharmacists, ranking fifth in median earnings among almost five hundred occupations, make basically the same amount as their male counterparts when adjusted for working hours, as reported in the US census for full-time, full-year workers. This contrasts with the legal field, where gender inequality persists despite similar increases in female representation and specialized graduate schooling.

The key to understanding the pay gap is in understanding the difference between the two professions. Historically, both pharmacists and lawyers shared traits like long and irregular working hours, high self-employment, and associated risks. While these features continue to define the legal profession, modern pharmacists operate differently. In 1965, female pharmacists constituted less than 10 percent of pharmacists and earned 67 cents on the male pharmacist’s dollar because, most often, the male pharmacist was also the owner of the pharmacy. Pharmacists, particularly those working longer hours, earned more per hour, echoing similarities with today’s legal and financial sectors.

When pharmacies transitioned from private ownership to corporate entities, self-employed pharmacists all but disappeared which created greater gender equality. Consumers became accustomed to getting their medications from whichever pharmacist was on duty at the time they arrived, not “their” pharmacist. This same evolution has not happened in law, where consumers still demand “their” lawyer. The emphasis on personal contact perpetuates pay discrimination in the law profession.

Women and Businesses

In the United States, there are over 14 million women-owned small businesses. This number makes up 40% of all businesses in the US and generates $2.7 trillion annually. In the last couple of decades, the small business sector as seen an enormous increase in women-owned businesses. In fact, from 1997 to 2017, women-owned businesses have increased by 114%.[24] Women tend to have businesses centered in the Healthcare & Social Assistance sector as well as the Professional, Scientific, & Technical Assistance sector most often.[25] Although women-owned business trends are improving, it is also important to look at women representation in other aspects of business, such as executive boards. Companies who have the most gender diversity on their boards are 25% more likely to have above-average profits than comparable businesses.[26]

Globally, about one in three entrepreneurs who have their own up-and-running business are women, and women are also more likely than men to be starting a business by themselves rather than with a business partner. In lower-income countries, a higher percentage of women had plans to create their own business than in countries with a higher income. Moreover, start-up rates for women were also much higher in low-income areas. Across the world, women entrepreneurs are usually younger and more highly educated than men entrepreneurs. This illustrates the fact that women feel more pressure to start businesses before starting a family, since women are often expected to stay home and raise children.[27] Although statistics for men and women in the business and entrepreneurship world are not quite equal yet, women have made incredible strides at securing business opportunities throughout the world.

The goods, services, and labor that women provide economically look different when comparing different places in the world. For example, throughout the continent of Africa, women make up more than 70% of those who informally cross borders to trade goods such as food, crafts, manufactured items, and more. Because this trade happens in a highly informal setting, women who participate often face many violent barriers, including but not limited to harassment and imprisonment. However, in 2018, the African Continental Free Trade Area was established, which strengthens the way intrastate commerce and trading is conducted and provides better and more standard protections for traders. Additionally, it makes formal trading a more accessible space, allowing more informal traders to transition their commerce into the formal sphere.

The creation of the African Continental Free Trade Area was a win for the African continent as a whole that offered significant improvements for women working within the trade economy. This intrastate commerce and trading is crucial to the economic development of many countries, and women play an overwhelming role in keeping it alive and growing.[28] In Latin America and the Caribbean, women, throughout the 21st century, saw an increase in economic earnings, number of jobs, and overall power within the economy. For example, the number of women participating in the labor market in the area of Latin America and the Caribbean increased by 15% from 2000-2010, while male workers only saw an increase of 2%.[29] This increase in numbers can largely be connected to more accessible educational initiatives and practices. However, Latin America and the Caribbean is a large area, and the statistics do not hold true for each individual country.

Board Members

Domestic work plays a unique role in both global and regional economies. This type of work is notoriously undervalued and underpaid, with workers facing increased violations as opposed to many other sectors. In Latin America, women make up 93% of domestic workers in the region, the type of work that accounts for 14.3% of all female employment. However, over 77.5% of domestic work occurs in the informal sector.[30] This number is alarming for the fact that the informal sector has fewer protections for workers. Yet domestic work in both the formal and informal sectors also exists as a pathway to other types of work and remains an important steppingstone for many women in order to gain more financial and economic freedom.

Conclusion

Throughout history, women, just like men, have played a role in a variety of sectors of work and business. The goods, services, and business that women supply to the world, regional, and local economies is crucial to the survival and maintenance of modern economic systems. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated many longstanding inequities, but many parts of the world are also seeing gender gaps in economics begin to close.

[1] Lewis Wickes Hine, Globe Cotton Mill, Augusta, Ga (1909) Woman was “with child.” According to reports, women work until the day of childbirth, Photograph, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Globe_Cotton_Mill,_Augusta,_Ga._Woman_was_with_child._01639v.jpg.

[2] C. Upham, “Educational Progress in Virginia,” Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Wikimedia Commons, July 21, 1883, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Progress_in_Virginia%E2%80%94The_Schools_for_Colored_Children_in_Richmond.jpg.

[3] Ida Tarbell, Circa 1904, Photograph, Public Domain, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/97509168/.

[4] 2 Young Women (Tintype) Lowell mill girls photographed with a tintype, Circa 1870, Photograph, Public Domain,  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2_Young_Women.jpg.

[5] Three African American women in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, Circa 1925, Photograph, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Three_Harlem_Women,_ca._1925.png.

[6] Sandy Carter, “Who runs the World? Women Control 85% of Purchases,” Forbes, March 7, 2024, https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/03/07/who-runs-the-world-women-control-85-of-purchases-29-of-stem-roles/.

[7] Julia Meyer, “The Pink Tax: The Cost of Being a Woman,” NOW, August 8, 2024, https://now.org/blog/the-pink-tax-the-cost-of-being-a-woman/.

[8] Monique Woodard, "Unlocking the trillion-dollar female economy," World Economic Forum, last modified May 31, 2023, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/05/unlocking-trillion-dollar-female-economy/. 

[9] Reeves, Of Boys and Men, 153.

[10] Sylvia Allegretto, “The teacher pay penalty has hit a new high: Trends in teacher wages and compensation through 2021,” August 16, 2022, https://www.epi.org/publication/teacher-pay-penalty-2022/.

[11] Allegretto, “The teacher pay penalty has hit a new high.”

[12] Ariane Hegewisch and Adiam Tesfaselassie. “The Gender Wage Gap by Occupation 2018,” The Institute for Women’s Policy Research, April 2, 2019, https://iwpr.org/publications/gender-wage-gap-occupation-2018/. 

[13] John Phelen, “Harvard Study: ‘Gender Wage Gap’ Explained Entirely by Work Choices of Men and Women: The ‘gender wage gap” is as real as unicorns and has been killed more times than Michael Myers,” Foundation for Economic Education, December 10, 2018, https://fee.org/articles/harvard-study-gender-pay-gap-explained-entirely-by-work-choices-of-men-and-women/?gclid=CjwKCAjw26H3BRB2EiwAy32zhZKsF45zDh2P22RHSXgHrfc-hthCcA1Xh1hyUhN3A9XFwvx9XP6u6hoCXokQAvD_BwE.

[14] Smialek, Jeanna. “Claudia Goldin Wins Nobel in Economics for Studying Women in the Work Force: Her research uncovered the reasons for gender gaps in labor force participation and earnings. She is the third woman to win the prize.” The New York Times. October 11, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/business/economy/claudia-goldin-nobel-prize-economics.html#:~:text=The%20Nobel%20Memorial%20Prize%20in,progress%20in%20the%20work%20force.

[15] Phelan, “Harvard Study.”

[16] Phelan, “Harvard Study.”

[17] Hartmann, Hegewisch, Gault, Chirillo, Clark, “Five Ways to Win an Argument about the Gender Wage Gap.” The Institute for Women’s Policy Research. September 2019. https://iwpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/C447_GWG-Talking-Points_2019.pdf.

[18] Leila Schochet, “The Child Care Crisis Is Keeping Women Out of the Workforce,” Center for American Progress, last modified March 28, 2019, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2019/03/28/467488/child-care-crisis-keeping-women-workforce/. 

[19] Hegewisch, Ariane and Adiam Tesfaselassie, “The Gender Wage Gap by Occupation 2018,” The Institute for Women’s Policy Research. April 2, 2019. https://iwpr.org/publications/gender-wage-gap-occupation-2018/.

[20] Reeves, Of Boys and Men, 24.

[21] Reeves, Of Boys and Men, 21.

[22] The Obama White House. “President Obama delivers remarks honoring World Champions, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team in the East Room of the White House.” October 27, 2015. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:President_Obama_posing_with_USWNT_Women%27s_World_Cup_champions_2015-10-27.jpg.

[23] Megan Leonhardt, “The surprising truth about asking for raises at work: Men are almost as unlikely to ask as women,” Fortune, April 5, 2023, https://fortune.com/2023/04/05/pay-gap-men-versus-women-asking-for-raises-pew/.

[24] "Facts About Small Business: Women Ownership Statistics," US Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, last modified March 21, 2023, https://advocacy.sba.gov/2023/03/21/facts-about-small-business-women-ownership-statistics/.

[25] "Diversity wins," McKinsey and Company, last modified May 2020, https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/featured%20insights/diversity%20and%20inclusion/diversity%20wins%20how%20inclusion%20matters/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters-vf.pdf.  

[26] "African Continental Free Trade Area," African Trade Policy Centre, https://au.int/sites/default/files/documents/36085-doc-qa_cfta_en_rev15march.pdf.

[27] "The Effect of Women's Economic Power in Latin America and the Caribbean," World Bank, last modified August 2012, https://www.bancomundial.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/PLBSummer12latest.pdf.

[28] UN Women, "Domestic Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean during the COVID-19 Crisis," UN Women, last modified December 6, 2020, https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---americas/---ro-lima/documents/publication/wcms_751773.pdf.

[29] UN Women, "Domestic Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean during the COVID-19 Crisis."

[30] UN Women, "Domestic Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean during the COVID-19 Crisis."