The table gives information about the allocation of employment across six professional sectors for men and women in New Zealand between 1993 and 2003.
What is most striking when looking at the table is that among the examined professions, business and social services experienced growths in both male and female workforce share, whereas declines in both genders were seen in agriculture. Meanwhile, in the remaining sectors, there were notable shifts in the gender composition of the workforce. It is also important to acknowledge that services and transports remained the most employed profession in both years.
Focusing first on the two sectors that recorded general increases in patterns of both genders, it is noticeable that a slightly more significant change was witnessed in the patterns for female workforce than its male counterpart. There was a 21% rise in the proportion of businesswomen compared to 18% in that of businessmen, both of which contributed to the final 22% and 25% of the female and male labour workforce share respectively. Less notable gains were seen in social services, where the percentage of women working in this industry increased by 5% to reach 18% in 2003, while the male share rose from 5% to 9%.
In stark contrast to the patterns of aforementioned categories, only in agriculture was a significant loss of workforce recorded, which was primarily attributed to the dramatic 30% decline from 38% to 8% in the male workforce share. Its female equivalent, on the other hand, observed a much more modest drop from 8% to 6%.
Finally, turning to the sectors where different patterns were experienced between the two genders, it can be observed that less women were employed in manufacturing and services & transport whereas building witnessed the opposite. Looking at services and transport, from its initial standpoint of 53% and 22% of female and male labour force share respectively, the former saw a 17% decline while the latter observed a 9% growth, which did not affect the fact that this sector remained the sector with the highest statistics. Similar patterns were witnessed in building, where the female share grew from virtually none to 6% while its male counterpart declined by 2% to reach 10% in 2003. On the contrary, in manufacturing, the female proportion shrank by more than a half, from 25% to 12%, whereas a modest growth of merely 1% was recorded in the percentage of male labour force share, which reached 17% in 2003.