Women's work

Women of the 80's: 'Yuppies'.

I have chosen to examine women in the 80's through the rise of so-called 'yuppie' women & the meaning of the term. Standing for Young Urban Professional, the early 1980's gave rise to a league of head-strong professional women, who were often associated with the term. Urban dictionary defines a Yuppie woman as: " very arrogant well put together young urban professional who you more than likely will find wearing gucci and prada with a large bank account which they love to brag about. You can find them drinking Starbucks, living in a one bedroom apartment in a city where they will pay 1000-2000 a month for and spending another 3000 a month on their credit cards. They brag about their designer clothes and love to flaunt them, as well as their wealth. They look down upon anyone who isn't as wealthy or high status as they are."

That definition makes them sound fairly mocked, but whilst reading it I thought that It wasn't un-realistic to think that there are still many sex-in-the-city type women living that lifestyle today. The yuppie represents that women in the 80's were starting to be considered as 'professional' for the first time, and that young women in particular were seeking to 'have-it-all' in terms of work and family life. The way the women right is analysed represents that women wanted jobs (in offices and management) that would be in keeping with a certain standard of lifestyle and living, a female cleaner wouldn't be able to afford a Ralf Lauren suit as the woman right has, nor would she have any need for it. The way the woman has a suit and running shoes represents that Yuppies tried to juggle work & lifestyle, and the 'rise' of the yuppie and the attention they received (I feel most especially women- as business men were not a particularly 'new' concept, even with yuppie clothes and accessories) shows that a wider range of work became available in more 'high-end' jobs, and reflects the increased child-care availability.

The 80's rise of young professional women spawned the start of the acceptance of women in management and better-paid office positions compared to being receptionists for example. Though the 80's did not allow for complete equality for women it paved the way for women of today, and allowed women job opportunities they had previously never had.

Women in the 21st century: the working mum.


Newspapers and magazines today are full of stories of working mothers who return to work soon after giving birth. In one case, a headmistress returned to her desk 7 hours after the birth of her daughter: (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
news/article-1249063/Headmistress
-goes-school--7-hours-giving-birth.html) "She is determined that the girls at her exclusive school will not be afraid to ‘have it all’ when they get older. Every school day since, she has brought her baby in, breast-feeding her between meetings and letting her doze during the more arduous parts of her schedule." And the backlash to this return has been enormous- just some of the comments: "I'm sorry, but how is teaching children to come back to work seven hours after giving birth in any way providing a "pretty special and excellent role model". Women's groups had to fight for years to gain the right to maternity leave, to do this flies in the face of reason."

Rather than celebrating women 'having-it-all' many stay at home mothers believe some women have chosen their career over their children, and rather than having both prefer to simply have a career and let a day-care or nanny do the mothering. It shows the freedom women have today to work the hours they choose, be that less due to maternity leave and gender equality laws, or more. Women working in managerial roles has clearly been accepted, however it is far from an equal playing field in terms for pay or the range of job types for 21st century women. Though it seems to have become accepted to work and have children (although we may be reaching a point maybe where it is begining to go back slightly due to the extremity of such cases) women in the 21st century are not entirely equal to men.

I feel the majority of women would not feel they live in an un-equal society, (in western socities majoritively however) as the majority of women don't aspire to become a top mechanic or stock brocker, but those who do wish to work in less accepted roles still recieve a degree of prejudice, and although women in management is accepted, it is not 'equal' it still seems to be a male dominated domain.
There are some interesting graphs below documenting global 21st century womens work situations, taken from this report of global employment trends:http://www.ilo.org/public/libdoc/ilo/P/09275/09275(2009).pdf

I hope you can read the graphs above, the 2nd being most interesting- the green represnts the percentage of males/females employed in service jobs, purple industry, red agriculture. It can be seen in developed economies such as the U.S the trend was that the service sector was dominated by women, and there was more than double the amount of men employed in 'industry' jobs compared to women.