From Mill Town to Board Room: The Rise of Women's Paid Labor

Abstract

In the United States and in other OECD countries of the twenty-first century, women are likely to be active participants in the labor force, holding the full range of unskilled, professional and managerial jobs. Widespread work for pay outside of the home and work in the highest echelons of society would have been unheard of for the women of a century ago. In the United States, only 20 percent of all women worked for pay in 1900. Less than 6 percent of all married women older than 15 labored for pay. Those who did work came from predominately working-class families. By the century's end, the labor force participation of all women older than 16 had risen to 60 percent, participation of all married women older than 16 had risen to 62 percent, and participation rates were higher among college educated women than among those with a high school education or less.This dramatic change in women's social and economic status can only be understood by looking to the past. In the first few decades of the twentieth century, the "factory girl" set the stage for the unmarried "office girl." The unmarried office girl paved the way for the entry of married women into the labor force in the late 1950s, even though this entry was primarily in dead-end jobs in the clerical sector. In turn, the married women in the labor force paved the way for the rise of the modern career woman, doing work that requires a lengthy period of training and that offers genuine opportunities for promotion. As late as 1970, only 14 percent of all doctoral degrees were awarded to women, only 8 percent of all students enrolled in law schools were women, and only 8 percent of all medical school graduates were women. By the end of the 1990s, women earned 40 percent of all doctoral degrees and represented over 40 percent of all graduates from medical and law schools

Female employment and occupational changes in the 1990s: How is the EU performing relative to the US?

“…This educational upgrading of the labour force has also taken place in the EU, although in some countries took place much later than in the US. For instance, in 1940 roughly 50% of the US youths already had a medium level of education-High School diploma, whereas the corresponding proportion for some EU countries was around 20% (see Costa, 2000). 45}54).…”

“…On public pay determination systems in the EU (see Elliott et al, 1999). See, for instance, Blau et al (1998) and Costa (2000) for the US during the 1970}1990 period, and Anker (1998) for EU countries during the 1980s.…”

“…In the US, occupational segregation is lowest for women with a tertiary level of education and declines across age cohorts for this group. Although it could be argued that this pattern could be due to age-speci"c occupational choices for highly educated women, there is strong evidence of a time trend towards lower segregation in the US (see Blau et al, 1998;Anker, 1998;Costa, 2000) and that this trend is related to their educational upgrading. As for the EU, occupational segregation is higher than in the US for highly educated women, particularly for women aged 35}44.…”

“…Those occupational changes seem to have accelerated the entry of women into the so-called &non-traditional' female careers, with signi"cant economic and social e!ects both on the distribution of resources within the family and on the functioning of the labour market (see, e.g. Costa, 2000).…”

On Why Gender Employment Equality in Britain Has Stalled Since the Early 1990s

“…In Great Britain, the female participation rate in both 1850 and 1960 was around thirty-five to forty percent (Joshi et al, 1985;Costa, 2000;Olivetti, 2014). In the more commonly studied United States, in 1890 only eighteen percent of women worked for pay, increasing to twenty-six and sixty percent by 1940 and 2000 respectively (Olivetti, 2014).…”