Women have become a majority of professional workers. Approximately one-half of mothers of young children also work outside the home. Some of these changes spell an improvement for American women in general and for many individual women, including women from minority racial and ethnic groups. But many women did not share in these improvements. These women are disproportionately women of color, although the majority of disadvantaged women are non-Hispanic white.
Women are three-fifths of all poor adults, and one in eight women are poor.
Nearly three-fourths of the nation's elderly poor are women. Single mothers head the nation's poorest households. More women are high school dropouts than are college graduates. Nearly half of employed women are in lower-paying administrative support and service jobs. Almost 4 million women are isolated due in part to the fact that they do not speak English fluently, and the fact that they live in households where no one over age 13 speaks English fluently.