Saturday, May 12, 2007

Should women go back to the workforce again?

Since mother's day is approaching, I will talk about an article related to our dearest mummy.
The article that I read is on the issue should mothers get back to the workforce?
This article states that the percentage of women in the workforce is declining from year to year. This year there's only 64% of women in the workforce compared to 76% last year.
Why is the percentage of women in the workforce declining? Well, there are several factors.
First of all, most of the women will quit their jobs when they have young children to take care with. No doubt, mothers can give up everything for their children. Many young mothers who just started the motherhood life will want to spend as much time as possible with their beloved babies or children. To be a full-time mother, most of the women will quit their job and work as housewives.
Secondly, more and more families are rising from middle-income to high-income family; this means that most families are ecomically-stable with men being the sole bread winner alone. Hence, more and more women get to enjoy an easy and carefree life. Women no longer need to work to earn extra salary for families. This is one reason why more and more women are leaving the workforce.
Now, we face the question that should women join the workforce again after their children has grown up?
Singapore government encourages women to join workforce. This is because being in the workforce, women will know how's the Singapore's economy doing and most importantly, women can be independent of themselves and do not need to rely on men for financial support. Also, Singapore depends greatly on human capital. Singapore has a small population; if Singapore's economy is solely run by men, the economy will definitely slow down. Thus we need both men and women to work together to boost Singapore's economy to the optimum. To encourage women to join the workforce again, Singapore government provides training for the older women to upgrade themselves. Women will get to learn a new skill during the training and government will help to get a job for women who wish to go back to the workforce. Also, more and more childcare subsidies are given to mothers with young children. This is to encourage mothers to stay in the workforce and subsidies act as incentives for parents to put their children in childcare centre while they are working.
In my opinion, I think that it is normal for mothers to quit their jobs for the sake of taking care of their children. If I become a mother next time, I will quit my job too and concentrate on taking care of my children if possible. I feel that it is important that parents spend enough time with their children. Spending insufficient time with children will affect their development. However, I think that a housewife should still continue to observe the economy and constantly upgrade themselves with new skills and knowledge so that they will not be left behind.

Here, I want to wish all mothers around the world a very HAPPY MOTHERS' DAY!

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