Presentation: Presser

Presentation by Harriet B. Presser on Working in a 24/7 Economy: Challenges for American Families, for the event: The Great American Time Squeeze: The Politics of Work and Family in a 24/7 World on March 3, 2005

Demographic change and response: social context and the practice of birth control in six countries

This paper expands on Kingsley Davis’s demographic thesis of change and re- sponse. Specifically, we consider the social context that accounts for the primacy of particular birth control methods that bring about fertility change during specific time periods. We examine the relevance of state policy (including national family planning programs), the international population establishment, the medical profession, organized religion, and women’s groups using case studies from Japan, Russia, Puerto Rico, China, India, and Cameroon. Some of these countries are undergoing the second demographic transition, others the first. Despite variations in context, heavy reliance on sterilization and/or abortion as a means of birth control is a major response in most of these countries. The key roles of the medical profession and state policy are discussed, along with the general lack of influence of religion and of women’s groups in these countries

Decapitating the U.S. Census Bureau's "Head of Household": Feminist Mobilization in the 1970s

In 1970, as in previous decades, the U.S. Bureau of the Census's household enumeration began with a lead question as to who was the 'head of household'. With the resurgence of feminism, this concept was challenged as an ambiguous concept which implied an authority structure imputed by the Bureau not measured, and offensive to many people. This paper tells the story of successful feminist mobilization in the 1970s that led to the removal of this concept from the U.S. decennial censuses beginning with 1980.Head Of Household, Censuses, Feminist Mobilization,

Women's gender-type occupational mobility in Puerto Rico, 1950 — 80

This paper investigates the patterns and determinants of women's mobility into and out of male-dominated occupations in Puerto Rico during a period of rapid development between the 1950s and the early 1980s. The paper uses data from the Puerto Rico Fertility and Family Planning Assessment of 1982, which includes detailed retrospective calendar histories of women's employment and other life-course changes. An event history approach allows an examination of the effects of human capital, family status, socialization, and opportunity structure in the labor market on women's entry into male-dominated occupations and their subsequent shifts to other occupations. The findings indicate that women's entry into male-dominated occupations increased for first jobs during this period of economic development, and there was modest cross gender-type mobility among women who experienced job changes. Finally, the variables more directly tapping labor-supply factors show stronger effects on women's labor-force behavior than those more directly tapping labor-demand factors.Female labor-force participation, gender, occupational segregation, JEL Codes: J62, J24, N56,