Giving Compass' Take:

• The authors at Brookings describe trends in women’s employment, whether men or women are more likely to get college and doctoral degrees, how segregated fields of study and occupations are, and the gender pay gap.

• How can philanthropy help strengthen the gender revolution? What are the potential future outcomes of investing in gender equality now? 

• Here's Giving Compass' Gender Equity Guide. 

Progress toward gender equality over the last 50 years has been so dramatic that the changes are sometimes referred to as the “gender revolution.” However, since about the turn of the century, progress has slowed and, on some indicators, completely stalled.

The most fundamental change in gender inequality has been the dramatic rise in women’s employment. As Figure 1 below shows, the percent of women employed for pay rose steadily from 1970 to 2000, moving from 48 percent to 75 percent of women employed. However, since 2000, despite some small ups and downs, the percent employed has shown no net increase. Indeed, the 2018 level—73 percent of women employed—was slightly lower than the 2000 figure of 75 percent. Women’s employment has thus been plateaued for about 20 years. Moreover, separate analyses (not shown here) reveal that the more education a woman has, the more likely she is to be employed, but that what women of all educational levels have in common is that their percent employed has plateaued.

In contrast to the stall in women’s employment, getting higher education is the one area in which women have not only caught up to men, but moved ahead of them. Women surpassed men in getting college (baccalaureate) degrees in the mid-1980s. More recently, in this century, women edged ahead of men in getting doctoral degrees (PhDs, MDs, JDs in law, and other doctorates).

Read the full article about the gender revolution by Paula England, Andrew Levine, and Emma Mishel at Brookings.