Women’s Work Pathways Across the Life Course

Abstract

Despite numerous changes in women’s employment in the latter half of the 20th century, women’s employment continues to be uneven and stalled. Drawing from data on women’s weekly work hours in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), we identify significant inequality in women’s labor force experiences across adulthood. We find two pathways of stable fulltime work for women, three pathways of part-time employment, and a pathway of unpaid labor. A majority of women follow one of the two fulltime work pathways, while fewer than 10 percent follow a pathway of unpaid labor. Our findings provide evidence of the lasting influence of work-family conflict and early socio-economic advantages and disadvantages on women’s work pathways. Indeed, race, poverty, educational attainment, and early family characteristics significantly shaped women’s work careers. Work-family opportunities and constraints also were related to women’s work hours, as were a woman’s gendered beliefs and expectations. We conclude that women’s employment pathways are a product of both their resources and changing social environment as well as individual agency. Significantly, we point to social stratification, gender ideologies, and work-family constraints, working in concert, as key explanations for how women are “tracked” onto work pathways from an early age.

Course of employment in adults with cerebral palsy over a 14‐year period

“…Although a moderate part was still studying, in the same period unemployment in CP also increased, indicating that persons with CP are already at risk for unemployment from young adulthood onwards. A similar pattern of growing parttime employment was observed among females of the Dutch general population, 11,20 likely explained by a cultural feature of females in a dual role as worker and primary caregiver. However, based on the present results, employment rates of adults with CP seem to stabilize between 21 to 45 years.…”

“…Verhoef et al 10 expected a further increase in employment after the age of 20 to 24 years, since at that age range a proportion was still studying. 20 Additional analyses showed that, in our study, females that became mothers decreased their work hours. This is in accordance with Mitchell et al, 9 who found in a cross-sectional study the highest employment rates for individuals with disabilities (including CP) in their twenties and thirties (56% and 60% respectively) while from their forties onwards, employment showed a decline (42-28%).…”

America’s Churning Races: Race and Ethnicity Response Changes Between Census 2000 and the 2010 Census

“…Instead, analyses are designed and described as if each person is a permanent member of a race/ethnic group (e.g. Adamczyk et al 2016; Damaske and Frech 2016; Elliott 2015; Krivo et al 2015; Lopoo and London 2016; Mehta et al 2013). …”

Buying a Voice: Gendered Contribution Careers among Affluent Political Donors to Federal Elections, 1980–2008

“…Early work on women's political engagement raised the question of whether women speak with a "different voice" when they participate. Theorists proposed that gender differences in participation strategies could arise from gendered socialization practices or the myriad ways in which women continue to experience inequality of status and position in the home (Fuwa 2004;Gerson 2010;Hochschild 1989), workforce (Budig and England 2001;Damaske and Frech 2016;Glauber 2007;England 2010;Yavorsky, Keister, and Nau 2017), and educational system (Jacobs 1996), among other significant social institutions. For these reasons, scholars speculated that a "politics of difference" might emerge as women forged political identities consistent with their divergent interests (Flammang 1997;Staeheli 2004).…”