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Title: Opting Out?
Citation Type: Book, Section
Publication Year: 2018
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Abstract: Women's participation in paid employment has increased substantially in the United States over the past fifty years, particularly among married women and mothers of young children. This occurred without a substantial reorganization of work or family life. Although men perform more housework and child care than in the past, they still spend on average far less time engaged in these activities than women do, leaving the gendered nature of family life and childrearing essentially intact. The nature of paid work also remains fundamentally unchanged. Despite the expansion of maternity leave policies and flexible work schedules, the organization of most workplaces is still predicated on a concept of workers as "male" and free of personal responsibilities (Acker 1990). Many working women with children consequently experience significant difficulties because of the competing demands of work and family life. This has prompted questions about the sustainability of high employment rates for women. In this chapter I consider whether recent cohorts of women in professional and managerial occupations are increasing or maintaining high employment rates or are "opting out" of professional employment to stay at home with children. Whether US women will maintain high employment levels has sparked interest outside of academia. Mainly relying on anecdotal evidence, many media outlets in the United States have run stories either predicting or claiming an exodus of women from professional work (Williams, Manvell, and Bornstein, 2006). One of these articles made a particularly controversial claim: a New York Times Magazine article by Belkin (2003) describes an "opt-out revolution" among highly educated professional women and asserts that women's voluntary employment exits to accommodate childrearing account for persistent gender inequalities in employment. Media attention to "opting out" centers on highly educated women in professional and managerial occupations, and perhaps for good reason. The expansion of women's educational opportunities has yielded more women qualified for historically male-dominated jobs that require advanced schooling. Because professional and managerial occupations confer prestige, social influence, and economic rewards, women's success in these fields may be particularly
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Authors: Percheski, Christine
Editors: Grusky, David; Hill, Jasmine
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Volume Title: Inequality in the 21st Century: A Reader
Publisher: Westview Prints
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Family and Marriage, Gender, Labor Force and Occupational Structure
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