outside the home in ways that their grandmothers and even their mothers could only dream of. In the US, for the first time, in 2011, women made up slightly more than half the workforce. There are (some) high-profile women chief executives. There is a small but increasing number of female presidents.Womenare moving into jobs that used to be done by men. Even those women working in factories or sweatshops have more choice and independence than if they remained at home. But their experience is contradictory, as feminist economist Ruth Pearson points out:As individual workers they experienced both the liberating or the “empowering” impact of earning a regular wage, and of having increased autonomy over their economic lives; at the same time many were also well aware of the fact that their work was low paid, both in comparison with male workers but also with women workers employed in industrialised countries.

This contradiction is widespread – although more women are working, they are often still worse paid than men, in part-time jobs or in the huge informal employment sector with little protection and few rights. In many places, the increase in women working is simply driven by the necessity of having two wages to make ends meetwomen can take their decisions by their own too but the process is very tedious and will take time