my two cent worth

• Among women age 20 and older, 60.8% were working or looking for a job in July. That's close to the all-time peak of 61% that occurred in April 2000 and again in June 2003. In March 2005, the number had fallen to 60%.

My opinions

It was said by Vicky Lovell of the Institute for the Washington-based Institute for Women's Policy Research that women have been the workers fuelling economic growth. I am glad that the society is opening up to both male and female workers.Males are no longer the only ones responsible to bring in income while the females stay at home to cook and look after the child. The society is slowly but surely moving towards sex equity whereby both sexes will be provided with equal work opportunities.

There are many advantages for the influx of female workers in the workforce. One of the main advantages is no doubt the increase in workforce population. Women are not only capable to increase the workforce population and drive the economy further, they are also capable of climbing up the corporate and political ladders. Take for example entrepreneur Elim Chew of Singapore. She is the Managing Director of 77th Street (S) Pte Ltd, has 100 workers under her and has penetrated the foreign markets such as Beijing with her home-grown company. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf , the first female president of Liberia and Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland , are two fine examples of successful female who climbed up the political ladder.

Another advantages will be the increase in child birth. As written by Janadas Devan, senior writer of Strait Times, though it may sound counter-intuitive, there is a positive correlation in developed countries between high female workforce participation rates and high fertility rates: the higher the proportion of women in the workforce, the higher the TFR. This can imply that the more fullfilled educated women feel, the more likely they are to have children. Take for example, in Denmark,Finland,Norway and Iceland, women are more actively involved in the workforce than in Italy and spain.The sexes are more equal and women are producing between 1.74 and 1.94 babies per female, far above the EU average of 1.47.

In order to attract more women ito the workforce, i think employers should be considerate towards women and adopt policies that help women balance work and family such as child care assistance, flextime, compressed work weeks, job sharing and reduced work schedules for women returning from maternity leave.

Therefore, by encouraging women to enter the workforce, not only will it increase the talent pool, it will also increase the number of babies. Hence, helping to solve the problem of labour shortage and ageing population.

posted by nutty-me @ 12:17 PM