THE CHANGING ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE LABOR FORCE

The most dramatic trend in the supply of labor after World War II was the increase in the proportion of women, particularly married women, who participated (worked or actively sought work) in the paid labor force. Table 29.4 shows the key ratios. The proportion of women participating in the paid labor force increased from 38 percent in 1960 to 54 percent in 2010. The pundits were fond of pointing out (accurately) that classic television comedies, such as Leave It to Beaver (originally shown from 1957 to 1963), that portrayed a family in which the mother did not work outside the home no longer represented the typical American family. The proportion of men in the labor force, on the other hand, fell substantially, in some cases because the additional income earned by their wives made this choice feasible. The figures are also shown in Table 29.4. Labor force participation of men fell from 83 percent in 1960 to 64 percent in 2007. The last three observations in Table 29.4 reveal the effects of the economic crisis of 2008. The labor force participation rate of both women and men has fallen. High unemployment rates have discouraged many potential workers from even looking for a job.

Source: Statistical Abstract, 2010.

Increased participation of women in the paid labor force over the postwar period was the result of a number of economic, political, and cultural trends (Goldin 1990, 138149). Both Economic Reasoning Proposition 3, incentives matter, and Economic Reasoning Proposition 4, institutions matter, explain the change in the role of women in the labor force. We list the major economic factors below, but they are so interwoven that it is hard to say which was the most important.

1.  Real wages rose. Real wages of men rose, which tended to discourage the labor force participation of married women, but the effect of higher real wages available for women dominated.

2.  Years of schooling increased dramatically over the course of the twentieth century. About 10 percent of the nonwhite women born in 1900 and about 30 percent of the white women born in 1900 would graduate from high school; by 1970, those figures had increased to 80 and 90 percent. The increased incomes made possible by additional schooling encouraged women to join the paid labor force. This factor, of course, operated with a long lag. For some women, the full effects of education on labor force participation were not seen until they had passed the age when childrearing demands were greatest.

3.  The average number of children in a family declined from three or four at the beginning of the century to one or two in the 1980s, and the average life expectancy of women increased. Together, these demographic trends meant that women had many more years to pursue a career after the burdens of rearing a family moderated.

4.  An increased rate of divorce encouraged women to invest in a career outside the home. The interaction of these trends was complicated. For example, although a rising divorce rate encouraged women to work outside the home, the rising participation rate of women in the paid labor force encouraged some women to choose divorce who would have been unable to afford it in earlier periods. Causation, in other words, ran both ways.

5.  The rapidly growing service sectors, especially the clerical and education sectors, were particularly attractive to women. Until 1950, the growth of these sectors affected mainly the participation rates of white single women because of discrimination against married and minority women. As discriminatory hiring practices were broken, the effects of growth in these sectors spread more widely.

6.  The growing availability and technological sophistication of consumer durables affected labor needs in home maintenance. Electric washing machines and refrigerators, low-maintenance fabrics, telephone answering machines, and other labor-saving devices reduced the labor input in home maintenance.

In addition to these economic forces, the feminist movement helped overcome discrimination against women workers through moral suasion and political action. Some barriers were broken during World War II. Before World War II, many firms had “marriage bars.” These firms simply did not hire married women and forced women who married while on the job to leave. Marriage bars became particularly widespread during the Great Depression as a way to ration scarce jobs. One rationale was that it was unfair for a married woman who might already have a breadwinner in the family to work, and thus take a job away from a man who was the sole support of his family. By 1950, marriage bars had virtually disappeared (except for flight attendants), and some personnel managers were singing the praises of married women.

Another burst of activity occurred in the 1960s. President Kennedy’s appointment of a Presidential Commission on the Status of Women in 1961, with the venerable Eleanor Roosevelt as its honorary chair, was the starting point. Partly as a result of the commission’s recommendations, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which called for equal pay for equal work. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, passed in the following year, barred discrimination in hiring, promoting, or firing workers on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex and set up the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to help enforce the law. The word sex, incidentally, did not appear in the bill until the day before it was passed. It has been claimed that it was originally inserted with the idea of making the bill unacceptable to a majority, but the matter remains unclear (Goldin 1990, 2002). In 1965, President Johnson created the Office of Federal Contract Compliance to require the submission of affirmative action plans by employers doing business with the federal government. Affirmative action is more than a color-blind, sex-neutral labor policy; it requires positive efforts to find workers traditionally discriminated against. The National Organization for Women was founded in 1966, partly to pressure the government into vigorous enforcement of its new anti-discriminatory legislation.

During the 1970s the feminist movement experienced further successes. Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act of 1972 extended the Civil Rights Act to educational institutions; one consequence of Title IX was to increase the participation of women in high school and college sports. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the feminist movement seemed to lose momentum and was unable to win major legislative victories. The institutions created in the 1960s and 1970s continued, however, to press for the removal of discriminatory barriers.