Women's Participation in the Workforce

Find and read at least 1 credible source from the AIU Library or the Internet on the topic of women’s participation in the workforce (you can use the references provided or find new ones). View this video to learn about how to select credible sources of information.

Then, using this template, write an essay that addresses each of the following points:

Explain how social policies such as parental leave affect how many women participate in the workforce.

Discuss the benefits of paid parental leave for society, for the population, and for general public health.

Describe in detail at least 2 changes that the United States needs to implement to help more women participate in the workforce.

Support your arguments with examples, as well as information from intellipath® and the credible sources that you located. Use APA format to cite your sources within your paper, and list them on your Reference page.

Follow APA formatting requirements. Your paper should be 2–3 pages in length (not counting the Title or Reference pages), should include a Title page and a Reference page, and should be double-spaced with 1-inch margins throughout.

Ensure good writing. Follow an organized paragraph structure. Open with an introduction paragraph, close with a conclusion paragraph, and check for grammar and spelling errors.

Context:

You are selected by your company to talk to a group of business leaders in the United States. As you scan the crowd, you see only a few women in the audience. One week later, you give the same talk in Sweden and find that there are a lot more women in the crowd. In considering why there might have been fewer women in the audience in the United States, you wonder what factors may have affected their presence. As you dig further into the disparities, you uncover that there are vast differences in family planning options, maternity and paternity care, and health benefits between the two countries. Family leave, as part of our health care coverage, has always been a topic of interest in the United States.

Consider the following information:

The United States currently offers 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave to working mothers. On the other hand, Sweden offers 60 weeks of paid leave, which can be split between both mothers and fathers (Popovich, 2014).

In the United States, 34% of women do not return to work at all after giving birth, and in some sectors, women are leaving the workforce at twice the rate than men [though not always related to family needs] (Barnes, 2019).

You can read more about parental leave in the United States in articles by Livingston and Thomas and Arneson.

Arneson, K. (2021, June 29). Why doesn't the US have mandated paid maternity leave? BBC. 
Barnes, C. (2019, March 8). Beyond lip service: Attracting women in sales with policies that [Really] support their success. Sales Hacker. 

Livingston, G., & Thomas, D. (2019, December 16). Among 41 countries, only U.S. lacks paid parental leave. Pew Research Center. 

Popovich, N. (2014, December 3). The US is still the only developed country that doesn't guarantee paid maternity leave. The Guardian.