US Women are Facing Serious Employment and Occupational Discrimination. According to statistics, women account for more than 46 percent of the total US labor force and are an important driving force in North America’s economic growth. Nevertheless, women’s labor rights are not protected accordingly. Some of the major problems in this regard are as follows: First, occupational gender segregation is obvious in the United States. Jobs in high-tech and high-prestige sectors are filled significantly more by men than by women. In the United States, women are mainly employed in a limited number of sectors for secretarial work or retail positions. Despite an increasing number of people working in the science and technology sectors in the United States, the number of women working in these sectors has dropped significantly, accounting for only about 1/4 of the total number of people working. In the top 25 technology companies in the United States, female employees account for only 19.6 percent of all employees. Second, in the United States, the unemployment rate for women is significantly higher than that of men. According to an employment report released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, from October 2016 to October 2017, retail jobs in the United States decreased by 54,300. However, the impact on men vs. women was quite different. During this period, women lost more than 160,000 jobs, while 106,000 new jobs were added for men. Third, discrimination against pregnant women and new mothers remains widespread in US workplaces. In the United States, pregnant women and new mothers have to contend with employment discrimination. Many employers do not respect the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), and pregnant female employees are often forced to leave their jobs. Fourth, when it comes to career development, US women can hardly obtain the same development opportunities as US men, and it is also difficult for them to break the “glass ceiling” when competing for jobs against men. A survey reported on the website of the San Francisco Chronicle on December 21, 2018, in the United States, showed that half of the female interviewees working in science and technology jobs have experienced gender discrimination in the workplace, and about 70 percent of them said that there were too few women in political and business leadership positions.
