The Ups and Downs in Women's Employment: Shifting Composition or Behavior from 1970 to 2010?

This paper tracks factors contributing to the ups and downs in women’s employment from 1970 to 2010 using regression decompositions focusing on whether changes are due to shifts in the means (composition of women) or due to shifts in coefficients (inclinations of women to work for pay). Compositional shifts in education exerted a positive effect on women’s employment across all decades, while shifts in the composition of other family income, particularly at the highest deciles, depressed married women’s employment over the 1990s contributing to the slowdown in this decade. A positive coefficient effect of education was found in all decades, except the 1990s, when the effect was negative, depressing women’s employment. Further, positive coefficient results for other family income at the highest deciles bolstered married women’s employment over the 1990s. Models are run separately for married and single women demonstrating the varying results of other family income by marital status. This research was supported in part by an Upjohn Institute Early Career Research Award

“Doing Fear.” The Influence of Hetero-femininity on (Trans)women’s Fears of Victimization

Through 26 in-depth interviews with male-to-female transsexuals (transwomen), this study examines transwomen’s perceptions of safety, pre- and post-transition. The majority reported higher levels of fear and believed they would be unable to fight off an attacker post-transition even though most were large-statured and were socialized as males. Exposure to heterosexual practices and to cultural messages depicting women as physically weak and sexually vulnerable, and transwomen’s embodiment of hetero-femininity play a central role in increasing their fears. Their experiences as women are powerful enough to override decades of prior male experiences and expose the socially-constructed nature of fear and bodily agency

Cross-national Variation in the Influence of Employment Hours on Child Care Time.” European Sociological Review first published online February 23

Abstract: Parental time investments in children are essential inputs in children's present and future well-being. The ability of parents to make choices about child care time that are free from money and time constraints varies considerably, however, by employment status and country. We use nationally representative time diary data from nine countries with different gendered working time regimes to investigate how employment hours influence child care time, and whether parents in countries with high maternal employment rates, long work hours among mothers and fathers, and limited family policies have a deficit in child care time. We instead find that child care hours are lowest among French and Swedish mothers, and among French fathers, countries with relatively high parental employment rates but also short work hour cultures. We document a range of employment penalties on child care time among employed mothers and fathers in English-speaking countries and Slovenia, and smaller or no penalties among parents in the Netherlands and Nordic countries. Findings suggest employment associations with child care are not only mediated by gendered work hour cultures, but also culturally distinct parenting ideologies

Marital Status and Mothers’ Time Use: Childcare, Housework, Leisure, and Sleep

Assumptions that single mothers are “time-poor” compared with married mothers are ubiquitous, but variation in mothers’ time use is less studied than differences between mothers and fathers. We use the 2003-2012 American Time Use Surveys (ATUS) to examine marital status variation in mothers’ time spent in housework, childcare, leisure, and sleep. We find no difference in time spent on childcare between mothers, suggesting that behavioral propensities to engage in childcare are similar for all mothers; children’s needs are immutable. Married mothers do more housework and spend less time sleeping than all other mothers. Never married and cohabiting mothers have significantly more leisure time than married mothers, although this time is mostly spent watching television. Differences in demographic characteristic explain two-thirds of the variance in sedentary leisure time between married and never married mothers. These results provide no support for the time poverty thesis but offer some support for the doing gender perspective