Women’s Labor Participation Rate Lowest in Almost 20 Years

Women continue to struggle more than men in the post-recession job market. Bureau of Labor Statistics data released last week showed that the unemployment rate decreased in November – to 8.6 percent – and that women gained more than half of the 120,000 jobs added. Yet the Institute for Women’s Policy Research analyzed the new data and found that the job gap between men and women remains significant at 1.5 million jobs. Of the 1.6 million jobs added between November 2010 and November 2011, IWPR found that 474,000 were filled by women and 1,126,000 were filled by men. In addition, the female labor force participation rate fell from 58.2 percent in October to 57.9 percent in November – a decrease of more than 300,000 women and the lowest female labor force participation rate since September 1993. Female dropouts have exceeded male dropouts recently in part because state and local government layoffs have disproportionately hit women.
AAUW believes that to promote economic recovery, the president and Congress must focus on creating jobs, training our workers, and ensuring those jobs are good ones — the kind that pay equitably and provide economic security. AAUW strongly believes that access to high-wage, high-skill jobs should be a right for women and girls from diverse racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, age, and disability backgrounds and that access includes training for nontraditional jobs. Additionally, any job creation legislation must promote equal pay — women who work full time earn about 77 cents on average for every dollar men earn.

FBI Board Votes to Broaden Definition of Rape

An FBI advisory board voted this week to update their narrow definition of rape, which defines rape as "carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will." This definition – in place since 1929 – is narrower than the one used by many police departments around the country, and women's rights advocates say it leads to the under-counting of thousands of sexual assaults each year. The new terminology voted on by the board says rape is "penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim." FBI Director Robert Mueller now has to approve the definition change.
AAUW advocates freedom from violence and fear of violence in homes, schools, and workplaces, and strongly supports broadening the definition of rape. AAUW believes that sexual violence is a pervasive social problem across the globe, and we need to treat it as such by integrating greater sensitivity and accuracy into reporting about sex crimes.


Vita P. Como, Chair