Over the last 100 years, women have worked hard to carve out a place for themselves next to men in the workplace. Because of the efforts of female pioneers women can now be found working for an medical clinic, at the head of a multinational corporation, or even flying fighter jets. Though women can choose any career that they want, there are some careers that are more popular among women than others. Here is a list of the top career fields that women enter based on employment statistics.

Administrative Assistance

We may have come a long way from the time when the best job a woman could hope for at a major corporation was as a typist in the secretarial pool, but surprisingly many women are still choosing this field of their own accord. While there's an even chance that the new agent will be a woman, it's almost certain that his or her secretary will be female. In fact, close to 97% of all administrative assistance jobs (including secretaries, assistants, gofers, etc) are filled by females.

Nursing

The field of medicine now offers many options for women. There are female doctors, surgeons, specialists, hospital administrators, technicians, and even warehouse safety enforcers. However, women continue to overwhelmingly prefer one of the oldest female career fields: nursing. Whether it's the university educated Registered Nurse or the community college graduate Licensed Practical Nurse, over 92% of nursing jobs are occupied by women.

Education

Some of the first jobs that were open to women were as governesses to wealthy families. These early teaching careers eventually bloomed into positions running school houses and teaching at boarding schools. Since then, not much has changed. If you asked a group of women what they do for a living, chances are at least a few would be teachers, especially at the elementary and junior high level. There are slightly fewer at the high school level, but in total almost 82% of teachers are women.

Retail

Over 40% of small businesses are owned by women these days, so if you're looking for a wedding planner it is much more likely to be a woman than it would have been a few decades ago. However, statistics show that many more women have jobs as cashiers and salespeople than at the head of the business. Almost 75% of cashiers' jobs are held by women compared to about 52% of salespersons' jobs.