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Jason Furman's Reviews > Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey toward Equity
Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey toward Equity
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An amazing synthesis and extension of a career’s work on disparities in women’s experience in the workforce, how it has changed over time, and could change in the future. I was familiar with much of the argument from a number of Claudia Goldin’s papers and talks but really enjoyed seeing all of it tied together and framed so nicely around a set of women over the last century and they way they handled their constraints and tradeoffs around work and family. The book is very accessible to a general reader, it has a number of clear data plots but nothing remotely technical (in fact personally I would have liked a little more technical material, but I understand why it was omitted and know where to find it).
The most important argument in Goldin’s book is “true pay and employment discrimination, while they matter, are relatively small.” Instead the biggest obstacle to college educated women earning higher wages is institutional: the way that work is organized to reward “greedy jobs” that demand lots of your time at unpredictable hours (e.g., the investment banker that has to be available for a deal at any hour because the clients want them and they are not interchangeable with others). Her research has shown that women and men generally earn similar amounts initially but diverge dramatically after the birth of a child when women tend to drop out, shift to part time, or even just take jobs with more predictable hours—that generally come with lower pay per hour and less prospect for advancement. While Goldin is supportive of paid leave and other policy changes in her analysis it does not rectify this problem, what does is changing the way jobs are organized. Some of Goldin’s examples are veterinarians, pharmacists and doctors all of which shifted from always on jobs dominated by men to more scheduled and predictable jobs that are majority women.
“In a world of greedy jobs couple equity is expensive” Goldin writes, noting that many couples with children end up specializing with one having a higher-paid “greedy job” while the other is more available at anytime for children (who, although she does not use the word, can be quite greedy too with their need for unpredictable and unscheduleable attention).
The above paragraphs are about the present. But as an economic historian and labor economist, Goldin grounds all of it in a century’s history of women in the workplace and family. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Goldin’s analysis/narrative is how nonlinear the changes of women and work have been. I’m accustomed to looking at graphs of the steady increase in female labor force participation through 2000 (when it stalled out) and thinking of it as a monotonic progression. But Goldin looks much more carefully at the economic behavior by cohort (so not just everyone in 1960 but distinguishing 30 year olds born in 1930 from 60 year olds born in 1900) and organizes her story around five “groups”. She also looks at a wide range of data, including age at first marriage, age at first child, and whether ever had child by middle age.
Normally I’m skeptical of analysis that groups generations and implies discontinuous changes but Goldin’s data bears it out. Moreover, a lot of it is shaped by some actual discontinuities in circumstances: the Depression (which made it hard to get jobs, putting pressure on women not to work), World War II (the opposite), the Pill (at first largely available to married women but then for younger unmarried women). These groups are: (1 born 1878-1897) career or family; (2 born 1898-1923) job then family; (3 born 1924-43) family then job; (4 born 1944-57) family then career; and (5 born 1958-78) career and family. Thinking about these groups helped me to better understand women in my own life, like my mother, and contextualize them in their generations.
Some of the striking nonlinearities on the family side (all of these for college-graduate women):
—For the generation born from 1878-97 32% were never married by age 50. For the most recent generation that has fallen to 12%.
—For ever married women in the first generation only 30 percent were working at age 45-49 but it was up to 84 percent in the latest generation. Thus the shift from “career or family” to “career and family”.
—In the middle generation (born 1924-43) women had children very young: nearly 60 percent of women age 25-29 had a child as compared to about 25 percent now. But, technology has extended the ability to have children so looking at an older age the percentage with children is as high/higher than ever.
—Jobs have always been “greedy” (in the sense of rewarding people willing to be available anytime) but as inequality has increased the consequences of the gender disparities associated with greedy jobs have grown.
—The Pill, which enabled a generation of women to delay marriage and childbearing, opening up professional schools and career advancement.
—The increased availability of no fault divorce led women to invest more in themselves in ways that would outlast their marriage, including in terms of education and career.
Goldin’s history documents regulations and discrimination that prevented women from working in certain careers or barred married women from working, as well as documenting the way those rules evolved and were generally dropped over time.
Goldin’s solution is “we must change how work is structured. We have to make flexible positions more abundant and more productive.” A quibble with the almost uniformly excellent book is that she doesn’t exactly spell out the obstacles to this aspiration, specify exactly who the “we” is, or what exactly could bring this about. In many professions, as she notes, there is a high value to the same person having a wide scope of knowledge and engagement or being face-to-face with clients. It may be possible to make some changes (and she talks about some of the changes being made in, for example, finance) but they may be limited. Are companies leaving dollar bills on the table by overpaying for unpleasant hours and not having access to as many talented women? Are there limits to their change? Is there any role for public policy? How much would childcare help?
Overall, I loved the book and felt myself wanting even more.
The most important argument in Goldin’s book is “true pay and employment discrimination, while they matter, are relatively small.” Instead the biggest obstacle to college educated women earning higher wages is institutional: the way that work is organized to reward “greedy jobs” that demand lots of your time at unpredictable hours (e.g., the investment banker that has to be available for a deal at any hour because the clients want them and they are not interchangeable with others). Her research has shown that women and men generally earn similar amounts initially but diverge dramatically after the birth of a child when women tend to drop out, shift to part time, or even just take jobs with more predictable hours—that generally come with lower pay per hour and less prospect for advancement. While Goldin is supportive of paid leave and other policy changes in her analysis it does not rectify this problem, what does is changing the way jobs are organized. Some of Goldin’s examples are veterinarians, pharmacists and doctors all of which shifted from always on jobs dominated by men to more scheduled and predictable jobs that are majority women.
“In a world of greedy jobs couple equity is expensive” Goldin writes, noting that many couples with children end up specializing with one having a higher-paid “greedy job” while the other is more available at anytime for children (who, although she does not use the word, can be quite greedy too with their need for unpredictable and unscheduleable attention).
The above paragraphs are about the present. But as an economic historian and labor economist, Goldin grounds all of it in a century’s history of women in the workplace and family. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Goldin’s analysis/narrative is how nonlinear the changes of women and work have been. I’m accustomed to looking at graphs of the steady increase in female labor force participation through 2000 (when it stalled out) and thinking of it as a monotonic progression. But Goldin looks much more carefully at the economic behavior by cohort (so not just everyone in 1960 but distinguishing 30 year olds born in 1930 from 60 year olds born in 1900) and organizes her story around five “groups”. She also looks at a wide range of data, including age at first marriage, age at first child, and whether ever had child by middle age.
Normally I’m skeptical of analysis that groups generations and implies discontinuous changes but Goldin’s data bears it out. Moreover, a lot of it is shaped by some actual discontinuities in circumstances: the Depression (which made it hard to get jobs, putting pressure on women not to work), World War II (the opposite), the Pill (at first largely available to married women but then for younger unmarried women). These groups are: (1 born 1878-1897) career or family; (2 born 1898-1923) job then family; (3 born 1924-43) family then job; (4 born 1944-57) family then career; and (5 born 1958-78) career and family. Thinking about these groups helped me to better understand women in my own life, like my mother, and contextualize them in their generations.
Some of the striking nonlinearities on the family side (all of these for college-graduate women):
—For the generation born from 1878-97 32% were never married by age 50. For the most recent generation that has fallen to 12%.
—For ever married women in the first generation only 30 percent were working at age 45-49 but it was up to 84 percent in the latest generation. Thus the shift from “career or family” to “career and family”.
—In the middle generation (born 1924-43) women had children very young: nearly 60 percent of women age 25-29 had a child as compared to about 25 percent now. But, technology has extended the ability to have children so looking at an older age the percentage with children is as high/higher than ever.
—Jobs have always been “greedy” (in the sense of rewarding people willing to be available anytime) but as inequality has increased the consequences of the gender disparities associated with greedy jobs have grown.
—The Pill, which enabled a generation of women to delay marriage and childbearing, opening up professional schools and career advancement.
—The increased availability of no fault divorce led women to invest more in themselves in ways that would outlast their marriage, including in terms of education and career.
Goldin’s history documents regulations and discrimination that prevented women from working in certain careers or barred married women from working, as well as documenting the way those rules evolved and were generally dropped over time.
Goldin’s solution is “we must change how work is structured. We have to make flexible positions more abundant and more productive.” A quibble with the almost uniformly excellent book is that she doesn’t exactly spell out the obstacles to this aspiration, specify exactly who the “we” is, or what exactly could bring this about. In many professions, as she notes, there is a high value to the same person having a wide scope of knowledge and engagement or being face-to-face with clients. It may be possible to make some changes (and she talks about some of the changes being made in, for example, finance) but they may be limited. Are companies leaving dollar bills on the table by overpaying for unpleasant hours and not having access to as many talented women? Are there limits to their change? Is there any role for public policy? How much would childcare help?
Overall, I loved the book and felt myself wanting even more.
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Reading Progress
October 4, 2021
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Started Reading
October 4, 2021
– Shelved
October 14, 2021
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Finished Reading
