Final answer:
In 2014, women constituted 58.1% of the workforce and earned a majority of the higher education degrees. However, they still faced challenges in reaching top professional positions and experienced a wage gap, earning 77% of what men earned on average. The percentage of women as secretaries and men as engineers was not provided.
Step-by-step explanation:
The United States has seen a noteworthy increase in the economic participation of women as a result of cultural and legal changes since the mid-twentieth century. By 2014, 58.1% of adult women were active in the workforce compared to 72.0% of adult men. Career and education disparities between genders are well-documented, as women have traditionally been concentrated in roles such as secretaries, nurses, and grade school teachers, often with lower pay.
While women's educational attainment has risen sharply — receiving 56% of bachelor's degrees by 2014, up from 44% in 1971, and nearly half of all law and medical degrees — they still confront challenges in securing top positions within large companies and U.S. Congress. As for the U.S. Congress, only 21.2% of elected officials in the 115th Congress were women. Despite progress, women earn on average 77% of what men earn for equivalent work, indicating a persistent wage gap.
The queries about the percentage of secretaries being women and engineers being men in the U.S., while related to workforce demographics, require specific statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau data, which was not provided in the information given.