National Women’s History Month’s roots go back to March 8, 1857, when women from New York City factories staged a protest over working conditions. International Women’s Day was first observed in 1909, but it wasn’t until 1981 that Congress established National Women’s History Week to be commemorated the second week of March. In 1987, Congress expanded the week to a month. Here are some facts from the U.S. Census Bureau about women in the workplace:
- In 2008, the median annual earnings of women 15 or older who worked year-round, full time was $35,745, down from $36,451 in 2007 (after adjusting for inflation). Women earned 77 cents for every $1 earned by men.
- Women-owned businesses garnered more than $939 billion in revenue in 2002. There were 116,985 women-owned businesses with receipts of $1 million or more.
- There were nearly 6.5 million women-owned businesses in 2002. Women owned 28 percent of all nonfarm businesses; 916,657 of these were employer firms.
- More than 7.1 million are employed by women-owned businesses. There were 7,231 women-owned businesses with 100 or more employees, generating $274 billion in gross receipts.
- Nearly one in three women-owned businesses operated in health care and social assistance and other services, such as personal services and repair and maintenance. Women owned 72 percent of social assistance businesses and just over half of nursing and residential care facilities. Wholesale and retail trade accounted for 38 percent of women-owned business revenue.
- In California, women own 13 percent of businesses. California had the most women-owned businesses at 870,496. New York was second with 505,077 or 8 percent of all women-owned businesses. Texas was third in number with 468,705, accounting for 7 percent of all women-owned businesses.
- In 2008, 59 percent of females 16 and older participated in the labor force, representing about 72 million women.
- Thirty-eight percent of females 16 or older who work in management, professional and related occupations, compared with 32 percent of males.
- There are 23.8 millionfemale workers in educational services, health care, and social assistance industries. More women worked in this industry group than in any other. Within this industry group, 11.9 million worked in the health care industry, 9.1 million in educational services and 2.7 million worked in the social assistance industry.
- There is a 67 percent chance that your taxes will be prepared by a woman, as this was the percentage of tax preparers who were women in 2008. In addition, 72 percent of travel agents were women.
- There were 99,000female police officers across the country in 2008. In addition, there were about 14,000 women firefighters, 349,000 lawyers, 267,000 physicians and surgeons, and 36,000 pilots. (Note: Number of pilots pertains to 2007.)