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| Below is the newest installation of Research News Reporter (RNR) Online. Each month a new edition will be posted. Previous editions can be viewed in the Archives. |
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November 2003 |
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IWPR’s
Research News Reporter is distributed monthly to highlight inventive,
informative, innovative, and sometimes controversial research relating to
women and their families. Each selection includes a short description of
the research and either a link to the report itself or a citation. We
sometimes include short pieces in their entirety. In this edition: 1.
Responses
to The New York Times’ “The Opt-Out Revolution” 1.
The Opt-Out Revolution In her New York Times Magazine
cover story, Lisa Belkin asks an important question – “Why aren’t
women making it in the workplace?” – yet she comes up with an
incomplete answer. Belkin’s central hypothesis is that women fail to
reach senior positions in the workplace because they choose not to,
placing motherhood first. The article sparked numerous letters to the
editor of the Times, serious discussions in offices and homes
across the country, and a series of well-written rebuttals from feminists,
advocates, and scholars. Critics suggest that even if women are making a
choice, it is a very constrained choice. Women’s decisions to work are
constrained by the lack of family-friendly workplaces and policies and by
the fact that after leaving the labor force, it is very difficult for
women to reenter at the same level. Further, workplace policies affect
work/family choices by limiting the ability of men to leave the workforce
to care for children. If you haven’t read this now
infamous article, be sure to check out this link to the pdf version: Responses: IWPR President’s Response
to “The Opt-Out Revolution” A
recent cover story in the New York Times Sunday magazine on the reasons women don’t get to
the top has feminists everywhere alarmed.
That the New York Times
would publish such an extensive piece claiming that highly educated women
are voluntarily opting out of career success in increasing numbers
suggests that perhaps we are heading for another era of “feminine
mystique” urging women to go back home.
In other words, backlash writ large. The
most maddening thing about the article from the point of view of this
social scientist is that virtually no data are presented that back up the
claim that this is an increasing tendency. Lisa Belkin, author of “The Opt-Out Revolution,” cites
statistics that women MBA's and women Stanford graduates are more likely
to be out of the labor force than comparable men.
There’s nothing new in this.
The question is: are
highly educated, upper income women today more or less likely to drop out
of the labor force than previous cohorts?
Overall, most of the evidence we have suggests they are much less
likely to drop out and much more likely to work for pay.
One would never know that from reading Belkin's article. Only
one statistic cited in the article conveys a trend:
a 3.5.percentage point drop in the labor force participation rate
of mothers with children under one year of age, from 58.7 percent in 1998
to 55.2 percent in 2000. This
group of women is probably among the most vulnerable to job loss and many
of those who cannot find jobs due to the recession, particularly those
with little education, stop looking and are thus no longer counted as part
of the labor force. While it
is also possible that this data point reveals a significant change in
preferences on the part of the small subset of mothers who are highly
educated and have high family incomes, they too may be affected by the
recession and the lack of good job opportunities. Child care for infants is the most difficult to come by and
usually more expensive, so absent a good job the “choice” to stay home
becomes more attractive. This
recession and jobless recovery is in fact characterized by a high rate of
labor force drop out--the overall labor force participation rate has
fallen 1.3 percentage points between April 2000 and October 2003.
In the previous recession in 1991, men's labor force participation
fell only 0.7 percentage points, and women's only 0.1 percentage points.
Thus,
it’s far too early to tell whether a recent dip in labor force
participation for mothers is part of a long term trend or a response to
this recession. For most of
the past several decades women, and especially mothers, have been
increasing their time in the labor force, limiting the number of children
they have and spacing them closer together.
They have been voting with their feet toward greater economic
autonomy by working more in the labor market and earning more to support
themselves and their families. In
a review of 30 years of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics that
Stephen Rose and I have been working on, we find that women in the second
15-year period, 1983-1998 worked for pay much more than women did in the
prior 15-year period. In the
latter period, about ½ of women worked every year; in the earlier period,
that proportion was only about ¼. Most
likely Belkin’s hypothesis that the high income fast track women with
whom she spoke signal the start of a revolution will not be proven true as
the years unfold. Her
article also seems to deny the reality of what the women themselves
stressed, that their employers refused to provide more family-friendly
work schedules and that they hope to return to work shortly.
Changing
the behavior of employers and creating new norms that limit work hours and
make it more possible for everyone to balance work and family life or
personal activities is clearly the agenda we must pursue.
Personally, I’m less worried than I used to be that such
accommodations will reify a “mommy track” and more convinced that they
will increase women’s life time labor force participation and their
earnings. I also believe that
men will increasingly use such accommodations, the less stigmatized they
become, and the more that reduced time jobs have good pay and fringe
benefits and advancement potential. That’s
the revolution we need, and it is one that
is truly beginning. Our
job is to sustain it. Other Responses: There They Go Again Clueless in Manhattan Post-Feminist Swill Redux Other Relevant Analyses: Career and Family: College Women
Look to the Past 2. IWPR Analyzes GAO Report on
Women’s Earnings A
new report by the U.S. Government Accounting Office on women's earnings
finds that only a portion of the difference between women's and men's
earnings can be attributed to measurable differences in women's and men's
characteristics. Analyzing data for the period 1983 to 2000, the GAO
finds a wage gap of 44 percent (women earn about 44 percent less than men
in any given year of the study; these numbers include women and men who
work full-time and less than full-time). Gender differences in work
experience, education, occupation and industry of current employment, and
other demographic and job characteristics explain about half of the wage
gap, leaving an unexplained difference of approximately 20 percent.
"The report substantiates previous research finding that a
substantial part of women's earnings disadvantage is not related to how
many hours they work, whether they are married or have children, or how
many years they've been in the labor market," noted Dr. Heidi
Hartmann, IWPR’s President, "Discrimination is the most likely
explanation for this remaining difference." GAO
Report: Women's Earnings: Work Patterns Partially Explain Difference
between Men's and Women's Earnings The Gender Wage Gap: Progress of
the 1980s Fails to Carry Through IWPR Press Release 3.
Women's Job Loss and Material Hardship This
paper tests the relationship between women’s unemployment and six
hardship measures (including no phone, couldn’t pay rent or mortgage,
couldn’t pay utility, didn’t see dentist when needed, didn’t see
doctor when needed and food insufficiency). The researchers counter
assumptions that women’s earnings are supplementary income for their
families with the finding that women’s unemployment has substantial
negative effects on their families’ well-being.
http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/LovellOh6-03.pdf
4.
Annotated Bibliographies - "Gender and HIV/AIDS" and
"Gender: Not Just Women - Masculinity in a Global
Perspective." The
Women and International Development Program at Michigan State University (http://www.isp.msu.edu/wid/)
has published two comprehensive annotated bibliographies. The “Gender
and HIV/AIDS Bibliography” is divided into two sections: “Gender and
Development” and “Empowerment, Vulnerability, Rights, and
Sexuality,” with a total of over 90 references to organizations and
reports. “Gender: Not Just Women” provides an overview of over 100
volumes, articles, periodicals, monographs and websites. Both
bibliographies are great starting points for students, researchers, and
anyone interested in women and global politics. Gender
and HIV/AIDS Gender:
Not Just Women – Masculinity in a Global Perspective
5. Children’s
Defense Fund Analysis Shows United States Fails to Meet Four of Five Key
Health Goals for Infants and Mothers (Press Release) As
a follow up to Healthy People 2000, a set of maternal and infant health
goals put forth by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in
1990, the Children’s Defense Fund has analyzed newly released birth and
death statistics from 2001. Of the five key measures, goals set in four
areas (maternal mortality, early prenatal care, low birth weight, and very
low birth weight) have not yet been met. Further, large racial disparities
in the outcomes have not narrowed. http://www.childrensdefense.org/release031119.php 6. Economic Richter Scale This interactive site, created by
the AFL-CIO, adds to the debates over current U.S. economic conditions by
allowing viewers to compare state-level economic data. For each state, a
“Richter Scale” ranking is generated from data on unemployment, job
growth, poverty, health care coverage, household income, and personal
bankruptcies between 2000 and 2003. The site also contains links to
reports, op-eds, and further analysis. http://www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/todayseconomy/stateecoreports.cfm |
