- Such "women's jobs" as teaching, nursing, and secretarial work depend on skilled but cheap labor in fairly large quantities-and women who are entering the labor force for the first time, or reentering after a long absence, are willing to accept pay that is not commensurate with their skills or training.
- Most of the training for these occupations is acquired before employment. Thus the employer does not bear the risk of investing time and money training women, with the attendant possibility that they will soon leave.
- These "women's jobs" do not require a long-term commitment, or extensive sacrifice of time, and thus women, who have traditionally been seen as secondary earners who lack high career aspirations, are attracted to them.
- These jobs exist all over the country, and thus women are not usually handicapped by their mobility (if their husbands must move frequently in their jobs) or their immobility (if their husbands must stay in one place).
- Finally, these jobs have traditionally been held by women. The jobs are thought to call on skills that are innately female (the greater manual dexterity often attributed to women) or on skills that are acquired in the home (the patience to work with children!). Furthermore, these traditional female jobs rarely put women in a supervisory position over men-a situation that is thought to create rebellion among male underlings.
If there is today less resistance to female employment in traditionally male-dominated occupations, it has not been without its adverse consequences. In the present recession, women workers have accounted for significantly larger proportions of the unemployed-a fact that underscores their recent entry and consequent low status in a range of occupations (U.S. Department of Labor, 1975). And among women who have been able to keep their jobs, there seems to be no decrease in the income differentials between men and women. The grim news in the 1975 Manpower Report of the President was that "nearly two-thirds of all full-time, year-round female workers earned less than $7,000 in 1972" while "over three-quarters of full-time, year-round male workers earned over $7,000". Even when earnings are adjusted for hours worked and level of education of the worker, the large differentials in earnings between male and female workers persist. For instance, Suter and Miller (1973) found, in working with income data from 1966, that "if women had the same occupational status as men, had worked all their lives, had the same education and year-round full-time employment in 1966, their income would be... 62 per cent of that received by men".
The sex labeling of jobs, the occupational segregation of women, and the consequent income differentials between men and women have been remarkably persistent in the face of dramatic demographic and socioeconomic changes. But it is precisely these changes that will inevitably restructure the career experiences and labor market activity of women in the next several decades. The present female occupational distribution, as is noted in the 1975 Manpower Report, is the result of myriad influences, some in early childhood: "Role differentiation in early life later affects educational and occupational choices, hours and location of work, and other factors which relegate women to lower level positions in the lower paying industries" (U.S. Department of Labor, 1975).
The change that is coming can already be seen in the choices young women have been making in their educational and their family "careers." Because marriage is no longer an end in itself; because so many women spend time outside of marriage or in between marriages; because family/parental roles occupy a relatively short portion of a woman's total life in today's two-child society; because women are receiving the education and training (and with it the career aspirations) to cause them to plan for and expect employment opportunities parallel to those of men; and finally, because all of these conditions represent changes from the recent past, to note that the pattern of female labor force participation is likely to change is anticlimactic.
However, despite all these changes, nowhere is it suggested that the pattern of female occupational choices, earnings, or job mobility will approximate that of men, and certainly not in the near future. The reasons have nothing to do with women's skills or aspirations, and surprisingly little to do with the prospects for economic recovery in the United States in the next few years. The reasons have everything to do with the life cycle concerns discussed above. Although marital status and parental responsibilities are likely to become less salient in women's career choices, women will continue to bear the major responsibility for children, and it is their career that will continue to be marked by the need to accommodate both parental and occupational roles.
Whether female labor force participation will approximate that of males, or even whether it should-given that the distribution of mothers, and most of the responsibilities that accompany that role, is 100 per cent female-is not a particularly fruitful line of inquiry. More productive of insight will be some close attention to the social and economic lags created by these recent social and demographic trends. Two examples come readily to mind: the "two-career family" and the "dual career" woman.
The two-career family is one in which both the husband and the wife are employed; it characterizes a growing portion of all U.S. families. Traditionally, career mobility has involved some geographic mobility. A family with school-age children and headed by one wage earner is not particularly mobile; the two-career family is even less so. What will be the effects on the labor market of the increased reluctance or inability of talented young people to move to further their careers? Or, alternatively, what will be the effect on marriage and divorce patterns on the continued importance of a certain amount of geographic mobility in furthering one's career?
Second, "dual careers": Dual careers refer to the combination and juxtaposition of parental and occupational responsibilities which confront increasing numbers of women. As more and more women with family responsibilities enter the labor force, certain institutional changes may be necessary-among them, the improvement of child-care facilities, increased flexibility of work schedules, and better provisions for job training. At what cost will these changes to accommodate the dual career woman be made? Or, alternatively, what will be the costs (social and otherwise) of not making the necessary institutional changes?
