The popular job market is bringing women into the workforce faster than men: NPR

Gaby Gemetti thought she was failing. After having a second child, she struggled to be a good mother and also a good employee.

"I had the impression of not being a good mother," she says. "I woke up in the middle of the night thinking" Oh, my presentation "or just to work in general."

Thus, even though Gemetti was climbing the executive ladder of a Silicon Valley high-tech company, she quit work four years ago to stay at home in Santa Clara, California. As difficult as it was, Gemetti's decision has the needs of his son, when he began to need regular therapy.

But she failed to work on team projects. And recent headlines highlighting the need for women in technology have piqued her interest in finding a job. So she went back to work.

In the last three years, active women like Gemetti have joined the labor market at twice the rate of men.

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This recent increase comes at a time when the economy is in full swing and the unemployment rate has reached historic lows, which means that workers have more opportunities to obtain higher wages and better wages. advantages.

These benefits attract working mothers, such as Gemetti. In March, she launched a "return program," a new type of program for recruiting and retraining women like her looking to resume their careers. The new concert, which manages a team at Cisco Systems, gives him time to occasionally pick up his kids at school.

Women returning to work at higher rates since 2015 radically reverse the trend of the previous three years, when women left the labor market twice as fast as men. It is also a reversal of a decline of almost two decades in the percentage of working women.

During the Second World War, women began to be part of the labor force. This trend has not stopped for decades. Until 2000. Then he began to dive – a decline that continued during the Great Recession and ended in 2015.

Today, many employers struggle to find workers and try to attract them with more family-friendly benefits, such as flexible hours and paid time off. This is attractive for women, who remain the primary caregivers for children and elderly parents.

The growth of the female workforce is also due to the growth of sectors such as health care and education that rely heavily on women, for example.

Women are also making progress in areas traditionally dominated by men, such as manufacturing and construction, said Martha Gimbel, Director of Workplace Research, Indeed, a sponsor of the NPR.

"In a tight labor market, employers are willing to consider applications that they may have rejected in the past," she said.

Another attraction for women is that employers who compete for workers pay more. But is it enough, given a number of other financial barriers that prevent women from working?

Their return to work means increased demand for child care, which is harder to find. And unlike Canada and Europe, the United States does not subsidize child care.

"If a woman has a relatively low hourly wage, it might be more logical for her to take care of her own children," says Claudia Goldin, professor of economics at Harvard University, who does research on women in the labor market, even if it means earning less later in life when a woman returns to work.

"Can workers supporting wage growth pay for more expensive child care?" Gimbel asks.

The job gains made by American women in recent years are far less important than in countries like Canada and Sweden, where a higher percentage of women work.

"It's a real indication that something is wrong," says Goldin.

Women in the United States face greater financial problems. This is largely related to their role as the default caregiver in many families. Paid leave to care for sick children and family members remains relatively rare. Some cities and states require it, but not the federal law.

This makes it more difficult to keep a job.

There is another deterrent, says Goldin: Married women with working wives are taxed at a higher rate.

The calculation for working, or not, is personal and practical. But this choice has long been judged and criticized as a subject of culture wars. In the 1980s, it focused on "children with children" – children of working parents who opened their own homes after school and took care of themselves.

The #MeToo movement has revived workplace debates, including pay inequality and the representation of women in the ranks of leaders. Many employers are now trying to solve this problem.

They add retraining and mentoring programs to encourage women to return and explicitly recruit women, says Sonu Ratra. She took a career break and founded a recruitment company and a placement and support group called Women Back to Work.

"There has been a cultural change in the last two years," said Ratra. "Women are celebrated more today than ever before."

And this change is not only felt by women.

When Gaby Gemetti decided to return to work, she and her husband changed their schedule.

"We were like:" Oh my God, child care, what are we going to do for kids? "She said.

Gemetti is lucky. Her mother and a part-time babysitter can pick up the kids at school almost every day, while Gemetti and her husband replace the others. But between her daughter's swimming and dancing classes and her son's baseball practices, it's still a daily logistical challenge.

This juggling was no easier, she says: "The practice is at 5:30 pm, so you have to leave work at 4:30 pm to prepare for combat, and what will you do after dinner?"

All this is part of the calculation that Gemetti and the other women realize when they return to the job market.