What Next On The Path To Equality

As unconscious bias and contending responsibilities in the home remain professional handbrakes for women, modern life expectancy may allow us to finally have it all.

By jitendermittal

Published 10 July, 2025

What Next On The Path To Equality

As unconscious bias and contending responsibilities in the home remain professional handbrakes for women, modern life expectancy may allow us to finally have it all.

By jitendermittal

Published 10 July, 2025

Remember that young woman you used to work with? That one who was sharp as a tack. Energetic. Driven. A gun. Her manager raved about her. Or that one who punched above her weight and could always be relied to deliver; who fired up the workplace. Her peers were in awe. Another still who was a natural with people – customers loved her and her people leader scores were off the charts. Think back and you can probably remember at least one female dynamo working her way up the corporate ladder. People said she’d be running the place one day. She entered the workplace ready to take the world by storm.

And then she didn’t.

Women have always worked for the economic benefit of themselves and their families (and others). Before the Industrial Revolution, when most of the labour force was in agriculture, women worked in farming families, as paid workers and in many countries as slaves. The Industrial Revolution saw labour shift from the farm to the factory. Women worked in factories too.

The model of male as “provider” and female as “homemaker” emerged as the natural way of things in Western countries during the 19th and 20th centuries. Resistance to women working in factories, both due to concerns about exploitation and male concerns that cheaper female labour was a threat, was one contributor. Another was the emergence of a middle class, families wealthy enough to not need a wife’s wages but not wealthy enough to hire a household of servants.

Some history of women in work:

Youcha, G. (2009). Minding the Children. Da Capo Press.