Opting Out,Scaling Back,or Business‐as‐Usual? An Occupational Assessment of Women's Employment

After decades of growth, women's labor force participation stagnated in the 2000s, prompting widespread interest in work–family balance and opting out. However, much of the research and media attention is limited to small samples of women in managerial and professional occupations. Using data from the 2009 American Community Survey, this article examines mothers' labor force participation and work hours across 92 occupations to assess whether mothers in nonmanagerial and nonprofessional occupations exhibit similar work patterns. I find that mothers in managerial and professional occupations are the least likely to remain out of the labor force but most likely to work reduced hours. The results indicate that there is significant occupational variation in women's work–family strategies, and these comparisons provide insight into the differential structures of disadvantage that encourage different work–family outcomes.     

The Motherhood Penalty at Midlife: Long‐Term Effects of Children on Women's Careers

The authors build on prior research on the motherhood wage penalty to examine whether the career penalties faced by mothers change over the life course. They broaden the focus beyond wages to also consider labor force participation and occupational status and use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women to model the changing impact of motherhood as women age from their 20s to their 50s (n = 4,730). They found that motherhood is “costly” to women's careers, but the effects on all 3 labor force outcomes attenuate at older ages. Children reduce women's labor force participation, but this effect is strongest when women are younger and is eliminated by the 40s and 50s. Mothers also seem able to regain ground in terms of occupational status. The wage penalty for having children varies by parity, persisting across the life course only for women who have 3 or more children.     

Labor Market Penalties for Mothers in Italy

We use a large Italian employer-employee matched dataset to study how motherhood affects women’s working career in terms of labor force participation and wages. We confirm that the probability of exiting employment significantly increases for mothers of pre-school children; however, this is mitigated by higher job quality, human capital endowment and childcare accessibility. Most importantly, the availability of part-time jobs reduces their probability of moving out of the labor force. Women not leaving employment after becoming mothers experience lower wages than women with no pre-school child, and there are no signs of this gap closing 5 years after childbirth. Contrary to previous literature, the wage gap penalty emerges only among women working full-time, thanks to the high protection accorded to part-time jobs in Italy.     

REAL WAGE AND EMPLOYMENT UNCERTAINTY AND THE LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION DECISIONS OF MARRIED WOMEN

This paper argues that an important factor in a married woman's decision to enter the labor force is the degree of uncertainty associated with expectations offuture wages and (husband's) income, and that high levels of uncertainty during the 1970s may have contributed substantially to the growth in participation in that decade. We apply a model of autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity to aggregate time series data to measure the level of uncertainty in each period. Our estimates support our hypothesis that the level of uncertainty is an important determinant of labor force participation for married women.     

Estimating sex discrimination in professional occupations with the dictionary of occupational titles

Although women have gained entrance into some of the top professional occupations, they appear to have achieved few economic gains from this progress. The extensive occupational segregation existing between men and women in all occupations handicaps investigations of the sources of this persistent inequality. This article proposes an exploratory method for identifying occupations containing comparable work and presents an analysis of male‐female wage differences within a subset of the highly skilled professional occupations. Using a cluster analysis of the characteristics of jobs available in the 1977 Dictionary of Occupational Titles, three clusters of high‐skill occupations are identified. Next, a sample of labor‐force participants, aged 25 to 35 years and employed in these occupations, is used in an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression of hourly wages on a standard set of labor market traits. These results are used to decompose the male‐female wage gap. A liberal interpretation of the decomposition estimates is that between 39.9% and 58.8% of the gap is attributed to comparable‐worth discrimination.     

A hierarchical theory of occupational segregation and wage discrimination

Becker's model of discrimination is extended to the case where men exhibit distastes for working under female managers. The distribution of women in the resulting occupational hierarchy depends on the number of women in lower occupations, the wages of male workers in lower occupations, and male distastes for female management. Thus, there exists an occupational sorting function, related to wages, that determines the occupational distribution of women. We integrate this sorting function into a standard wage equation to derive a new decomposition of male-female wage differentials and apply it to a sample of insurance industry workers from the 1988 CPS.     

Women's Occupational Trends in the Irish Economy: Moving towards High‐skilled Occupations or Evidence of Deskilling?

In recent years the increased participation of women in the Irish labour market and in tertiary education would appear to have placed them in an advantageous position to make use of the expanded opportunities in knowledge‐based occupations. Using occupational data from the 1996 and 2006 census this article examines the experience of women in high‐ and low‐skilled occupations. The data indicate that women are over‐represented in high‐skilled occupations relative to their overall participation rate in the labour force but there is also an increase in the proportion of women in low‐skilled occupations. The employment of women in high‐skilled occupations is substantially weaker in the private sector than the public sector. Public sector employment, we argue, is a crucial factor in the increased participation of women in high‐skilled occupations.     

GENDER-COHORT SUCCESSION AND RETIREMENT AMONG OLDER MEN AND WOMEN, 1951 TO 1984

Long-term trends in occupational change and retirement policy have influenced the relative labor force participation and retirement patterns of subgroups of the older population. Structural changes in the economy have had a large impact on older men and women, pushing the former out of the labor force while pulling the latter in. Meanwhile, the expansion of pension programs for the aged has generally increased the early retirement of men under age 65. Time-series analyses of these trends between 1951 and 1984 point to the specific influences of these factors on gender-cohorts.     

Occupational Human Capital and Wages: The Role of Skills Transferability Across Occupations

This paper examines the effect of accumulated human capital, and particularly occupational human capital, on the workers’ wages. Unlike previous studies that apply occupational tenure as a proxy for occupational human capital, this paper applies the concept of Shaw’s (1984) occupational human capital to capture the transferability of occupational skills and estimates a new measure of occupational human capital, so-called occupational investment. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) from 1979 to 2000, the key findings of this paper suggest that occupational skills from the previous jobs can also affect the workers’ wages at the current job and that occupational investment is one of the important sources of wages supporting the Shaw’s original work on wage determination. Specifically, 5 years of (3-digit) occupational investment relative to current occupational tenure could lead to a wage increase of 7.7 to 18.4 %. I also find that the general labor market experience accounts for a large share of workers’ wages.     

Women and changes in the Chilean economy: some questions

The author argues that a new development model that encourages greater participation of women in the work force in domestic piecework, temporary work, and subcontracting may further lead to the exploitation of women in Chile. The importance of women in economic development in Chile should be based on building skills, providing support child care services, reorienting women's education, and tax incentives. Chile over the past decade has achieved relatively stable economic growth and increased employment of women. During 1990-93 the growth of women in the work force increased at a rate of 16.8%, while men's presence increased by only 9.8%. The Chilean economy is based on a sophisticated modern sector and a labor-intensive informal sector. The Chilean model of development relies on cheap, flexible labor and a government approval of this model. Increased participation of women in the labor force is usually perceived as increased economic empowerment. A 1994 Oxfam study found that women were being forced into the labor market due to declines in family income and low wages. 46% of men and women received wages that did not cover basic necessities. The Chilean labor market is gender-stratified. Men are paid better than women for the same work. Men are in more permanent positions. Labor laws are either inadequate or violated, particularly for hours of work and overtime pay and conditions of employment and benefits. Traditional female jobs are those that rely on women's natural attributes. These unskilled attributes are rewarded with low wages. Little opportunity is provided for upgrading skills or acquiring new skills. Some women turn down advancement because of a lack of role models. Women have little opportunity to develop their self-image as workers. Poor self-images affect women's work attitudes and motivation. Some firms use competition between women to boost production. Chilean women remain in subordinate roles.     

The Importance of Context in Explaining Human Capital Formation and Labor Force Participation of American Indians in Rosebud County,Montana

Abstract In response to recent recommendations to incorporate social, political, and cultural contexts into employment and poverty analyses for minority populations, this paper draws on several sources and types of data to examine the human capital and labor force participation patterns of Northern Cheyenne Indians and non-Indians in Rosebud County, Montana. Discussions utilizing human capital and economic organization data contribute to clarifying differences in poverty levels of the two populations. However, the "embeddedness" approach utilizes ethnographic data and recent analyses of schooling to illuminate the social and cultural relations affecting Northern Cheyenne employment patterns as well as the methods by which individuals, families, and communities adapt to the recent declines in economic opportunity and wages on the reservation. Such discussions suggest the need to reconsider policies designed to address American Indian human capital formation and economic development needs.     

The economic role of immigrant wives in Hong Kong

The objectives of this study were to compare the employment pattern of immigrant wives with native-born wives in Hong Kong, to examine the independent influences of sociodemographic characteristics and the assimilation experience on employment behavior of immigrant wives, and to establish the extent to which immigrant wives' employment is affected by social and demographic factors and conditioned on the assimilation strategy adopted by their families. Data of the 1986 census were used, based on a 1% sample of currently married women 20-44 years old. 5478 women were identified by place of birth and length of residence in Hong Kong and 3214 native-born women were used as a comparison group. Of this 5478, 2018 women were earlier immigrants from mainland China who had lived in Hong Kong for more than 5 years and 246 were recent Chinese immigrants. Labor force participation of the native born was 51.87% and that of China born was 48.89%, however, early immigrants had a rate of participation of 46.84% and recent immigrants had 66.81%. The labor market incorporation of early immigrants showed that 10.28% were self-employed and 13.13% were outworkers, which was in contrast to the native-born, who were more represented in employee occupations. 79.12% of native-born were wage employees compared 69.58% of early immigrants. Immigrant wives were disadvantaged regarding education and vocational training; their wages were substantially lower than those of the native-born women. Immigrant families had an average of 2.2 children, compared to 1.7 for natives. Logit analysis showed that age had a negative relationship with labor force participation, while education had a positive effect, and recent immigrants had a significantly higher labor force participation. Multinominal logit analysis found that more educated and better skilled women were significantly more likely to engage in wage employment. Children in the family restricted women's participation in wage employment.     

Why are there so few women in information technology? Assessing the role of personality in career choices

Despite increases in female labor force participation, women remain substantially under represented in most scientific and technical fields. The small number of women in engineering, physics, chemistry, computer science and other similar fields has variously been attributed to discrimination, differences in ability or choice. This paper uses a unique data set containing information on vocational interests to examine the determinants of entry in to Information Technology occupations. We show that men and women differ systematically in their interests, and that these differences can account for an economically and statistically large fraction of the occupational gender gap.     

Sociodemographic Determinants of Occupational Risks of Exposure to COVID‐19 in Canada

The activities performed by Canadian workers in some occupations may increase the risk of exposure to infectious diseases such as COVID‐19. This research note explores how occupational exposure risks vary by labor force characteristics using publicly available Canadian data in combination with a data set providing information on the level of physical proximity and frequency of exposure to infections or diseases faced by workers in different occupations. The results show important sociodemographic differences. First, women work in occupations associated with significantly higher average risks of exposure to COVID‐19 than men. This is driven by their overrepresentation in high‐risk broad occupational categories such as health occupations. Second, older workers (65 years or more), a group vulnerable to COVID‐19, appear to work in occupations requiring performing activities characterized by a lower level of physical proximity than their younger colleagues, with minimal differences in the frequency of exposure to diseases or infections. Finally, workers in low‐income occupations are employed in occupations that put them at greater risk of exposure to COVID‐19 than other workers. This is especially the case for women, immigrants, and members of visible minority groups in low‐income occupations. More broadly, this research note provides insights into the health‐related dimension of the literature on occupational tasks and labor market stratification.     

Wives' Relative Wages,Husbands' Paid Work Hours,and Wives' Labor‐Force Exit

Economic theories predict that women are more likely to exit the labor force if their partners' earnings are higher and if their own wage rate is lower. In this article, I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 2,254) and discrete‐time event‐history analysis to show that wives' relative wages are more predictive of their exit than are their own or their husbands' absolute wages. In addition, I show that women married to men who work more than 45 hours per week are more likely to exit the labor force than are wives whose husbands' work approximately 40 hours per week. My findings highlight the need to examine how women's partners affect women's labor‐force participation.     

THE CAREER ATTAINMENT OF CAUCASIAN AND ASIAN ENGINEERS

This article explores the influence of race and nativity on the one hand and assimilation, human capital, and market structure on the other to explain patterns of income and career transitions of Caucasians and Asians in the engineering profession. Multiple and logistic regression techniques are employed to analyze the career histories of 12,200 Caucasian and Asian engineers followed from 1982 through 1986. The objective is to determine how well Asians have performed in the American engineering labor market in terms of wages, occupational status, and promotion in comparison to Caucasians. The results indicate more racial disparity in managerial representation and upward mobility than in earnings, and more disparity in career attainment between foreign-born Asians and Caucasians than between native-born Asians and Caucasians. The data suggest that Asian engineers, except recent immigrants, have achieved earnings parity but have not yet attained occupational equality with Caucasians.     

SEX-DIFFERENCES IN WAGES AND EMPLOYMENT: A TEST OF THE SPECIFIC CAPITAL HYPOTHESIS

This paper investigates the effect of sex-differences in turnover on the wages and employment of women relative to men. Using data from the 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity, it is estimated that at least two-thirds of the relative wage differential between men and women within occupations is accounted for by sex-differences in turnover and training. In addition, the relative number of women employed in an occupation varies inversely with the amount of on-the-job training, as measured by the rate of wage growth experienced by white males in the occupation. No attempt is made to compute possible biases arising from the interaction between market discrimination and sex-differences in labor force behavior.     

Arbeitsmarktsegregation und Einkommen

What mechanisms link horizontal labour market segregation and the gender gap in wages? One explanation is based on the cultural devaluation of typically ‘female’ skills and work contents which are held responsible for lower earnings in these occupations. In the present study the idea of devaluation of ‘female’ work is contrasted with other possible explanations such as occupational differences in specialized human capital requirements or unpleasant work conditions. Based on a large sample of employed persons in Germany (IAB-Beschaeftigtenstichprobe 1975–1995) and on a survey on work conditions (BIBB/IAB-Erhebung 1991/92), the influence of ‘female’ work contents and other occupational variables on individual earnings is modeled for East and West Germany separately. The results of multilevel analyses accounting for the embeddedness of individuals in occupations and industries show that some ‘female’ work contents — typing, cleaning and selling — decrease income, and thus are culturally devalued. In contrast, occupational differences in specialized human capital requirements and work conditions do seemingly not affect individual wages. In East Germany the results in regard of devaluation are less pronounced. In both parts of the country there is an unabatedly strong effect of individual sex on earnings which cannot be explained by the introduced occupational characteristics.     

Intersections on the Class Escalator: Gender,Race, and Occupational Segregation in Paid Care Work

As U.S. manufacturing and production industries have declined, the growth of the care sector has increasingly become an important source of jobs for workers without a college degree. Often requiring some form of postsecondary credentialing, many care occupations can provide better wages, job stability, and possible upward mobility for less educated workers. However, employment patterns in paid care work are both gendered and racialized: women and workers of color are overrepresented in care occupations with fewer entry barriers, benefits, and lower pay. Although these patterns are well documented, the mechanisms producing them are less well understood. Using event history analysis and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), this study evaluates the explanatory power of neoclassical economic, status attainment, and social closure theories of occupational segregation for black women’s and men’s greater hazard or “risk” of entering care occupations, relative to white workers. Net of individual and closure mechanisms, significant residual effects suggest labor market discrimination remains a primary explanation for the over-representation of black workers in less credentialed care jobs with fewer benefits.     

Determinants of employment of recently arrived Mexican immigrant wives

The work force participation of married, Mexican-origin immigrant women who came to the US in the 1980s was investigated. Determinants of employment utilized in this study are the women's human capital stock, household resources, and labor market structural factors. Nine hypotheses were derived from the analytical model and were examined through logistic regression. Findings showed that all human capital resource and structural labor market factors were significantly related to employment. On the other hand, four of the five family household factors namely: the age and presence of children in the household, husband's income, husband's employment, and non-labor income were significantly related to employment. Furthermore, the positive factors indicating the likelihood of being employed in 1989 for Mexican immigrant wives are: 1) being 25-54 years of age; 2) higher educational levels; 3) speaking fluent English; 4) lower levels of husband's income and non-labor income; 5) employment of husband in 1989; 6) absence of children under age 6 at home; 7) lower non-Hispanic female unemployment rates; 8) higher work force proportion employed in immigrant female-dependent occupations; 9) lower proportions of the Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) population being of Mexican origin; and 10) smaller MSA populations.