Female labor participation

Although discrimination in the workplace can occur to anyone, it primarily happens to women. Discrimination against women in the workplace is the act of treating women in an unfavorable manner simply because of their sex. Women face discrimination in the workplace in several ways. Women will encounter the "glass ceiling" in the workplace. The term “glass ceiling” refers to an invisible barrier that prevents women from furthering their careers with raises or promotions. The glass ceiling prevents women, and only women, from advancing their careers. Another one of the countless forms of discrimination women will face in the workplace is not receiving equal pay for equal work. Not receiving equal pay for equal work is another unfortunate from of discrimination against women in the workplace that causes women to make as little as 79 cents for each dollar that their male counterparts make (Filipovic). Discrimination against women in the work place doesn't stop at the "glass ceiling" and equal pay for equal work. It continues to limit women and cause women to not have as much access to the job market as men. Although sex should never be considered a qualification for a job, it frequently plays a role into why women are not hired for positions they are qualified for (“Sex/Gender Discrimination”). Most women will face discrimination in the workplace in countless forms throughout their careers.

Women in the workforce earning wages or a salary are part of a modern phenomenon, one that developed at the same time as the growth of paid employment for men, but women have been challenged by inequality in the workforce. Until modern times, legal and cultural practices, combined with the inertia of longstanding religious and educational conventions, restricted women's entry and participation in the workforce. Economic dependency upon men, and consequently the poor socio-economic status of women, have had the same impact, particularly as occupations have become professionalized over the 19th and 20th centuries.

Women's lack of access to higher education had effectively excluded them from the practice of well-paid and high status occupations. Entry of women into the higher professions like law and medicine was delayed in most countries due to women being denied entry to universities and qualification for degrees;for example, Cambridge University only fully validated degrees for women late in 1947, and even then only after much opposition and acrimonious debate. Women were largely limited to low-paid and poor status occupations for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, or earned less pay than men for doing the same work. However, through the 20th century, public perceptions of paid work shifted as the workforce increasingly moved to office jobs that do not require heavy labor, and women increasingly acquired the higher education that led to better-compensated, longer-term careers rather than lower-skilled, shorter-term jobs but women are still at a disadvantage compared to men because of motherhood. Women are viewed as the primary caregiver to children still to this day, so their pay is lowered when they have children because businesses do not expect them to stay long after the birth.

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