Where Women are Going

By the start of the 1980s, over 42 per cent of the total work‐force in the UK were women, with 52 per cent of all women between the ages of 16 and 60 working either part‐time or full‐time, the highest proportion of working women of any country in the EEC. Over 60 per cent of these women worked in three service industries: clerical and related; education, health and welfare, and catering, cleaning and other personal services, with clerical workers by far the biggest grouping. Women are not only concentrated in the low‐status industries, but at the bottom levels of these. For example, whereas women represent just under 75 per cent of all clerical and related workers, they account for only 19 per cent of office managers. Indeed, a recent report of the UK government's Manpower Services Commission (MSC) shows that in the UK only 20 per cent of all managers are women and if we exclude those women managers who work in clerical offices, wholesale/retail concerns and in hotels and catering, the figure drops to 10 per cent, with only eight per cent in general management posts.