From the valley to the summit: a brief history of the quiet revolution that transformed women's work

We can have a meaningful discussion today about "women at the top" only because of a quiet revolution that took place 30 years ago.Women - Employment ; Women executives

The Earnings Gap Between Male and Female Workers: An Historical Perspective

Has economic progress increased the relative earnings of females to males over the long run? Evidence on trends in the earnings gap for the last four decades appears to run counter to this hypothesis. Numerous data sources are used in this paper to piece together a 170-year history of the earnings of females relative to those of males and the variables that determine earnings in the market place. In brief, the constancy of the earnings gap from the 1950s is a short-run phenomenon and cannot be extrapolated into the more distant past.The ratio of female to male earnings in the economy as a whole rosefrom just over 0.45 to just under 0.60 during 1890 to 1930. It rose to just over 0.60 by 1950 but has been virtnally stable from then, declining somewhat during the early to mid-fifties and rising after 1981. The ratio in the manufacturing sector rose from about 0.35 in 1820, to 0.50 in 1850, and to 0.58 in 1930. Advances in the labor market experience of the female working population account for 24 percent of the increase in the earnings ratio over the 1890 to 1940 period. Increases in the returns to education and, to a lesser extent, in educational attainment, account for about 40 percent of the increase from 1890 to 1970. It is also possible that the decreased return to physical attributes (such as strength) accounts for another 28 percent of the increase in the female to male earnings ratio. The various factors considered account for about 85 percent of the entire increase in the ratio from 1890 to 1970 (some factors served to decrease the ratio). The constancy of the gender gap from the 1950s is a function of the increased labor force participation of women which served to stabilize the work experience of the working population of women and to make the future lightly unpredictable for many cohorts.

How America Graduated from High School: 1910 to 1960

Human capital accumulation and technological change were to the twentieth century what physical capital accumulation was to the nineteenth century -- the engine of growth. The accumulation of human capital accounts for almost 60% of all capital formation and 28% of the per capita growth residual from 1929 to 1982. Advances in secondary schooling account for about 70% of the increase in total educational attainment from 1930 to 1970 for men 40 to 44 years old. High school, not college, was responsible for the enormous increase in the human capital stock during much of this century. In this paper I answer when and where high schools advanced in the 1910 to 1960 period. The most rapid expansion in the non-South regions occurred in the brief period from 1920 to 1935. The 1920s provided the initial burst in high school attendance, but the Great Depression added significantly to high school enrollment and graduation rates. Attendance rates were highest in states, regions, and cities with the least reliance on manufacturing and in areas where agricultural income per worker was high. Schooling was particularly low where certain industries that hired youths were dominant and where the foreign born had entered in large numbers before the immigration restriction of the 1920s. More education enabled states to converge to a higher level of per capita income between 1929 and 1947, and states rich in agricultural resources, yet poor in manufacturing, exported educated workers in later decades.

The Meaning of College in the Lives of American Women: The Past One-Hundred Years

Three cohorts of college women are considered here. The first, graduating from 1900 to 1920, was faced with a choice of "family or career,? while the second, graduating from 1945 to the early 1960s, opted for family and employment serially - that is, "family then job." The third, graduating since 1980 in a climate of greater gender equality, is attempting both "family and career, " with mixed results and considerable frustration. This paper assesses the reasons for the changing set of tradeoffs each generation of college women faced and why the college education of women expanded in the post-World War II era. The first cohort attended college when the numbers of men and women in college were about equal, while the second attended college when the proportion of all undergraduates who were male was at an all-time high. Only half of the return to college for the second cohort came in the form of their B.A. degrees, while the other half came from their Mrs. degrees. Ironically, because the total return to college -- from the B.A. and Mrs. degrees -- was quite high, enrollments of women expanded rapidly and eventually gave rise to a demand for greater gender equality in the labor market and society.

Monitoring Costs and Occupational Segregation by Sex: An Historical Analysis

Supervisory and monitoring costs are explored to understand aspects of occupational segregation by sex. Around the turn of this century 47 percent of all female manufacturing operatives were paid by the piece, but only 13 percent of the males were. There were very few males and females employed by the same firm in the same occupation, and when they were, they were invariably paid by the piece. The group of industries that hired two-thirds of all male operatives, hired virtually no females. Males, but not females, were employed in teams across a variety of industries, and there was segregation by sex across various jobs requiring similar training and ability. Occupations in the clerical sector were rapidly "feminized" from 1900 to 1920 and an organization of work was employed resembling that used earlier in manufacturing. These findings can be understood by considering a model of occupational segregation in which monitoringis costly and males and females have different turnover rates. Employers adopt one of two solutions to avoid shirking -- piece rates and deferred payment. Because females are only employed in one period, piece rates are used for them; males, however, might prefer deferred payment which causes their earnings profile to be steeper than otherwise. Occupational segregation by sex results even if workers are homogeneous with regard to ability and there are nocosts of job investment. Males can also receive higher average wages per period than females. Under a reasonable set of assumptions, females would want to be employed in the male sector,but would be barred from doing so. Establishment-level and more aggregated data for manufacturing around 1890 are examined with regard to the costs of supervising and monitoring male and female workers in time and piece-rate positions.The findings tend to support the assumptions of the model concerning the relative costs of monitoring workers of different sexes paid by different methods.

The Long Road to the Fast Track: Career and Family

The career and family outcomes of college graduate women suggest that the twentieth century contained five distinct cohorts.' Each cohort made choices concerning career and family subject to different constraints. The first cohort, graduating college from the beginning of the twentieth century to the close of World War I, had either family or career.' The second, graduating college from around 1920 to the end of World War II, had job then family.' The third cohort the college graduate mothers of the baby boom' graduated college from around 1946 to the mid-1960s and had family then job.' The fourth cohort graduated college from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. Using the NLS Young Women I demonstrate that 13 to 18 percent achieved career then family' by age 40. The objective of the fifth cohort, graduating from around 1980 to 1990, has been career and family,' and 21 to 28 percent (using the NLS Youth) have realized that goal by age 40. I trace the demographic and labor force experiences of these five cohorts of college graduates and discuss why career and family' outcomes changed over time.

Life-Cycle Labor Force Participation of Married Women: Historical Evidence and Implications

The five-fold increase in the labor force participation rate of married women over the last half century was not accompanied by a substantial increase in the average job market experience of working women. Two data sets giving life-cycle labor force histories for cohorts of women born from the 1880s to 1910s indicate substantial (unconditional) heterogeneity in labor force participation. Married women in the labor force had a high degree of attachment to it; increased participation rates brought in women with little prior job experience and reduced cumulated years experience. According to extant schedules froma 1939 Women's Bureau Bulletin, 86% of married women born around 1895 and working in 1939 had been employed 50% of the years since beginning work, and 47% had worked 88% of those years. Average years of experience for cross sections of working married women hardly increased from 1920 to 1950, rising from 9 to 10.5 years. Because wages are calculated only for currently employed individuals, the steadiness in relative wages of women to men over this period may result from stable experience ratings for employed married women. An exploration of the determinants of labor force persistence points to the importance of occupational choice early in the work history of a woman and to the rise in clerical and professional occupations in extending life-cycle labor force participation.

From the Valley to the Summit: The Quiet Revolution that Transformed Women's Work

Meaningful discussions about women at the top' can take place today only because a quiet revolution occurred about thirty years ago. The transformation was startlingly rapid and was accomplished by the unwitting foot soldiers of an upheaval that transformed the workforce. It can be seen in a number of social and economic indicators. Sharp breaks are apparent in data on labor market expectations, college graduation rates, professional degrees, labor force participation rates, and the age at first marriage. Turning points are also evident in most of the series for college majors and occupations. Inflection or break points in almost all of these series occur from the late 1960s to the early 1970s and for cohorts born during the 1940s. Whatever the precise reasons for change, a great divide in college-graduate women's lives and employment occurred about 35 years ago. Previously, women who reached the peaks often made solo climbs and symbolized that women, contrary to conventional wisdom, could achieve greatness. But real change demanded a march by the masses from the valley to the summit.' That march began with cohorts born in the late 1940s.

Maximum Hours Legislation and Female Employment in the 1920s: A Reasse ssment

The causes and consequences of state maximum hours laws for female workers, passed from the mid-1800s to the 1920s, are explored and are found to differ from a recent reinterpretation. Although maximum hours legislation reduced scheduled hours in 1920, the impact was minimal and it operated equally for men. Legislation affecting only women was symptomatic of a general desire by labor for lower hours, and these lower hours were achieved in the tight, and otherwise special, World War I labor market -- hours of work declined substantially for most workers in the second decade of this century. Most importantly, the restrictiveness of the legislation had no effect on the employment share of women in manufacturing. The legislation was, on the contrary, associated with a positive impact on the employment share of women in sales (another covered sector). Finally, labor force participation rates of women across cities during the 1920s were strongly and negatively correlated with shorter hours of work per day, consistent with one time-series explanation for the increase in female market work. These results are consistent with a labor market model in which scheduled hours of work per day are negatively related to days worked per week, and that assumption is justified using previously untapped data on actual hours, scheduled hours, and days worked for women in the covered sectors.