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Before the 19th century, both men and women worked at home. But after slavery, history's enslavement of people of color never stopped. This is where racial and gender discrimination at work comes in. After the Industrial Revolution, such discrimination intensified. When women work in factories, factory owners don't pay women the same wages as men. Because factory owners didn't expect women to be working class for life. Later, at the height of the Great Migration, job opportunities for black men allowed their wives to leave the workplace to care for their families. During World War II, however, 6.5 million women entered the labor force to fill positions left vacant by soldiers. During this time, free childcare was born for the first time. Although women returned to their jobs in the home after the war, this brief breakthrough opened the eyes of what was possible. In 1963, John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act. Although people of color and women are still discriminated against because of historical issues, the situation is actively improving.

Recent years, women's participation in the workplace has been declining in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but in fact women's participation in the workplace continues to be low. Barriers to women's career paths are evident, including the unequal distribution of domestic work, the gender wage gap, the high cost of childcare, and the lack of paid leave. This, combined with social distancing caused by COVID-19, has devastated the jobs with the highest proportion of women, such as hospitality or retail.

The article discusses whether new policies to support families and women at work, including child allowances, waiving paid parental leave for childcare, and increasing the number of women in senior positions, can increase women's participation in the labor market rather than quitting their jobs to stay home with children for financial and family reasons.

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Can the child care and parental leave policies of other developed nations work in the United States?

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Can the child care and parental leave policies of other developed nations work in the United States?

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Are companies doing enough to support women workers?

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Are companies doing enough to support women workers?

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Might as well just give the parents the money.

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Might as well just give the parents the money.

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Allison Johnson, a campaign director for Parents Together Action

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It's better than direct child financial aid.

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It's better than direct child financial aid.

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Bauer, the Brookings fellow

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“The thing we heard over and over again was just those monthly, small payments.” “Everyone kept saying that, suddenly, they weren't going to have to worry about food on the table, or it would help with rent, or they could finally afford childcare. They could go back to work if they'd lost jobs in the pandemic.”

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“It's valuable to all of us that children are developing appropriately, are safe, are well cared for, are fed,” says Bauer, the Brookings fellow. “The idea that this is a collective project, that raising America's children and making sure that especially our mothers can come out of this hole — it's fundamentally important.”

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How to solve the difficulties suffered by women in the workplace?

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Would Biden's plans to help families offset the cost of childcare be effective?

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Would Biden's plans to help families offset the cost of childcare be effective?

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California requires publicly traded companies to include members of underrepresented communities, including women, on their boards, and female board members have swelled 67 percent since the legislation was passed in 2018. Washington State has followed suit, and at least nine other states already have or are considering similar legislation. Illinois, Maryland, and New York require companies to disclose their boards' gender composition.51

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More fathers will be involved in family life if parents' leave is increased.

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Many problems make it difficult to succeed even when implemented.

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Many problems make it difficult to succeed even when implemented.

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“The United States has an emphasis on quality and research on quality and opportunities for teacher training and emphasizing the type of environments that support child development,” Nunn says. “The United States also has a variety of offerings, so families can choose from a child care center, a provider in a home-based child care program [or] publicly supported programs like Head Start or public pre-K.” (Head Start is a federal program that provides childcare and pre-K services for low-income children from birth to age 5.)

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The difficulties encountered by working women don't stop there. I never imagined that in modern society nearly 50% of women would choose to give up their jobs to stay at home and take care of their children. The plight of women is far more brutal than I ever imagined. For women, it's not just about job opportunities and promotions. When they are beautiful, they hear ill-timed jokes, and the same goes for when they are ordinary. Sexual harassment, both verbal and behavioral, can also exist in a serious place like the workplace. As the weaker party in a gender relationship, women often feel offended because of their gender.

The fact that professional women have such a difficult path to both survival and advancement is not just because women are biologically built differently. It's more about a lot of historical and cultural context. Company management needs female leaders because there is no real empathy in this world. The likelihood of trying to get male leaders to understand women to improve the environment for female staff is not high. There is a need for more female leaders, not just in companies, but in society. They need to be able to have their voices heard and seek equality for thousands of women. Politics is frankly a career choice and women in politics are also far less successful than men. So, we have lost women's voices in politics, and we need to reclaim them and take their views seriously. I want to learn more about the statistics and realities of women in politics and seek out possibilities for change. Having a voice is vital for women. Women should not wait to be rescued by others but should take the initiative to seek solutions to the plight of their own gender.

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What is true gender equality?

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What are the conditions required to achieve gender equality?

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What are the root causes of women's difficulties in survival and employment?

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Greenblatt, Alan. "Women in Leadership". CQ Researcher, 23 Sep 2016.

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Ornes, Stephen. "The STEM Gender Gap". CQ Researcher, 07 Sep 2018.

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Rosenkrantz, Holly. "Abortion Rights". CQ Researcher, 22 Jul 2021.