Since the early 1970s, women's status has been changing, mostly because an increasing number of women have joined the nonagricultural workforce. According to government estimates, the number of working women doubled from 500,000 to 1 million between 1978 and 1980. By 1982 women accounted for 14 percent of all wage-earning and salaried employees throughout the country. Although substantial numbers of women were in the professions, particularly education, engineering, and medicine, most women held low-paying jobs in factories, offices, and service industries. Half of all employed women held jobs such as street cleaners, janitors, hotel and domestic servants, and hospital aides. In 1990 women accounted for more than 12 percent of all industrial workers; most female factory workers were in textiles, food processing, and pharmaceuticals.
Data as of December 1990