Married Women in Jobs

This article examines the association of personal and family factors with double job holding by married women in Great Britain in 1974. The author first considers reasons for double job holding and then examines data on the subject from the General Household Survey. The literature on the incidence and causes of second-job holding in Great Britain is extremely small.1 To the best of the present author's knowledge there have been no studies in any country which attempt to explain the decision to hold two jobs in terms of family behaviour. Most studies are interested in asking people general questions about why they have two jobs rather than investigating contingent factors which may be responsible for the decision to hold a second job. The present paper attempts to discover why married women have two jobs using data from the 1974 General Household Survey. The topic is one of importance as the advent of two-job wives may have a variety of implications for family role structure and public policy.