In 1981, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution establishing National Women’s History Week. The week was chosen to coincide with the annual International Women’s Day, March 8. In 1987, Congress expanded the week to a month; it has issued a resolution every year since then proclaiming March to be Women’s History Month. The U.S. president also issues an annual proclamation on this occasion.

Jobs
63%
Chances are your taxes will be prepared by a woman as this is the percentage of tax preparers who are women.

83%
The likelihood of a woman helping you plan your next vacation also is great, as this is the percentage of travel agents who are female.

97%
With Secretaries Day around the corner (April 21), it is worth noting that this is the percentage of secretaries and administrative assistants who are women.

250,000
Estimated number of female lawyers. About 16,000 are non-Hispanic black, 9,000 are non-Hispanic Asian and 11,000 are Hispanic. Among the 189,000 women physicians and surgeons, 13,000 are non-Hispanic black, 36,000 are non-Hispanic Asian and 10,000 are Hispanic. Of the 6,000 female legislators, about 870 are non-Hispanic black, 110, non-Hispanic Asian and 250, Hispanic.

78,000
Estimated number of female police officers. There also are more than 8,500 female firefighters.

57%
Percentage of advertising and promotions managers, public relations managers and accountants and auditors who are women.

Women are employed in a wide range of occupations. Below are some examples:

Occupation	No. of Employees	Occupation	No. of Employees
Post-secondary teachers	531,000	Architects	39,000
Bus drivers	253,000	Dancers and choreographers	23,000
Chief executives	212,000	Private detectives/investigators	22,000
Bakers	87,000	Aircraft pilots and flight engineers	5,000
Athletes/coaches/umpires	62,000	Astronomers and physicists	3,000
Musicians/singers	61,000	Explosives workers	1,000
Clergy	56,000	Ship/boat captains	1,000
Producers and directors	52,000	Nuclear engineers	700
Chefs/head cooks	48,000
News analysts/reporters/ correspondents	44,000

For more occupational data on women, go to <http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/eeoindex/page_c.html>

Earnings
$30,203
The median annual earnings of women age 15 and older who work full time, year-round. After adjusting for inflation, earnings for these women had climbed 1.8 percent in 2002. Earnings for their male counterparts rose 1.4 percent during the same period.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/001371.html>

77 cents
For every $1 their male counterparts earn, that is the amount in 2002 women earned who worked full time, year-round. This ratio matches the all-time high reached in 2001.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/001371.html>

$2.9 million
Estimated work-life earnings of women with a professional degree (i.e., medical, law, dental or veterinarian) who work full time, year-round. For women, like men, more education means higher career earnings. It is estimated that women without a high school diploma would earn $700,000 during their work lives, increasing to $1 million if they had a high school diploma and $1.6 million if they had a bachelor’s degree. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/education/000311.html>

Education
84.4%
The high school graduation rate for women age 25 and over in 2002. That exceeded the rate for men (83.8 percent), the first statistical difference between the two sexes since 1989.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/education/000818.html>

23.9 million
Number of women (25 years and over) with a bachelor’s degree or more in 2002, more than double the number of such women 20 years earlier.
<http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/tabA-1.pdf>

25.1%
Percentage of women 25 and over with a bachelor’s degree or more in 2002, about 1 percentage point higher than the previous year. The rate for men was 28.5 percent in 2002.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/education/000818.html>

57%
The percentage of college students who are women. Women have constituted the majority of college students since 1979. <http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/school/cps2001/tab10.pdf>

Women in the Military
1.6 million
Estimated number of women who are military veterans. The number of women veterans has risen from 1.1 million in 1980. <http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet?_program=ACS&_lang=en&_ts=91360441308> <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/census_2000/001120.html>

Motherhood
1.9
The current average number of children ever born to women 40-to-44 years old. This average is more than one child fewer than the average for women in this age group in 1976 (3.1 children).
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/fertility/001491.html>

55%
The percentage of mothers who in 2002 had infant children and were in the labor force, down from a record 59 percent in 1998. This percentage matches the 2000 participation level of 55 percent, which was the first statistically significant decline in labor force participation of mothers with infant children since the Census Bureau began calculating this measure in 1976. In that year, 31 percent of these mothers were in the labor force.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/fertility/001491.html>

18%
The proportion of all women, ages 40 to 44, who were childless in 2002. That is almost twice as high as women of that age group in 1976 (10 percent).
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/fertility/001491.html>

Population Distribution
146.7 million
The number of females in America as of July 1, 2002. That exceeds the number of males (141.7 million). Males outnumber females in every age group through ages 30 to 34. Starting with 35 year olds, women outnumber men. At 85 and over, there are more than twice as many women as men.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/hispanic_origin_population/001130.html>