Working Wives, Wages, & "The Feminine Mystique" Since the 1970's real wages in the US have been either "falling", or at least not rising as fast as before (depending on the inflation correction used and whether "compensation" or "take home pay" is considered). Of course many other things were happening in the US during this time which might be related to this: increased immigration from 3rd World countries, increases in the FICA deduction, and an increase in the number of working wives. On the correlation with "falling wages" and "working wives" the common claim has been that more wives now work BECAUSE falling wages mean that they "must work to maintain family incomes", which have continued to rise (by any inflation correction you use) as wages "fell" . IS IT CAUSE AND EFFECT, or Vice Versa? So did wives work because wages fell? Or did wages fall because more wives worked? Consider a typical family: dad makes $30,000 per year. Mom gets a job earning $20,000 a year. We can say "GOOD, now the family income is up to $50,000 a year". Or we can say "BAD because now the average wage for a worker in the family has dropped to $25,000 per year." Clearly the same thing which caused the family income to rise also caused the average wage to drop: the fact that the wife got a job that pays less than the husband. And typically, a newer and less experienced worker will make less money than a more experienced one (even in a world here women get equal pay for the same job as men). If married men had experienced a decline in their wage while female wages had remained stagnant, then I would say maybe wives worked to keep family income up. But this is not what we observe in the U.S. Since 1974 the real median income of married males has risen from $34,293 to $35,421 in 1999. Married women have seen theirs increase from $10,465 to $16,374. See the Census Bureau's web site: http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/p13.html under the heading "married, spouse present." If women "had to work to keep up the family income" one would expect that it would be wives of the lower income husbands that would work in greater proportion. As has been pointed out, the exact reverse is the case: it is the wives of the higher income husbands who work in greater numbers. The data shows that highly-educated couples with one high- earning spouse are *more* likely to have a second spouse working than low-education couples with a low-earning first spouse. From the Census' Current Population Survey: Education level % of dual earners couples College education 76% High school education 55% Didn’t finish high school 24% Either we conclude that it is the higher income families that most "need" the extra income from the working wife (very possible: see for example: Two Different Worlds and Baseball Players Syndrome on my web page at: http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/4834/93.txt). Or is there another reason why wives decided to work? And the fact that they worked reduced (or reduced the growth in) that "average wage"? The Feminine Mystique QUOTE from The New Yorker, June 14, 1999 article about Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, and the problem that has no name. QUOTE: It was in 1963, the tail of of the quiescent fifties, that Friedan burst forth with "The Feminine Mystique"-the same year that (Gloria) Steinem, then an unpoliticized girl around town, published "The Beach Book," which sought to impart frilly wisdom about suntans and rich men. ("A landing party from Aristotle Onassis's yacht has just come ashore to ask you to join them, You say no.") Friedan's book had begun as a questionnaire circulated at her fifteenth Smith College reunion (she was class of '42), and after five years of work it metamorphosed into an expansive, sometimes overwrought argument with what she viewed as the Donna Reed culture of her of her time. Half sociological tract and half impassioned manifesto, "The Feminine Mystique" took on "the problem that has no name" an amorphous malaise that afflicted college-educated American women, who smothered their children with attention, had unrealistic expectations of their husbands, and then sought to assuage their sense of quiet desperation by downing pills or having joyless extramarital affairs. That, she charged, was what came of being indoctrinated into society's rigid and largely unconscious notions of femininity. After pages and pages of deconstructing the fluffy content of the women's magazines (where the malaise "is solved either by dyeing one's hair blonde or by having another baby"), citing gloomy statistics and psychological surveys, Friedan moved to define the problem in the largest possible terms, as "Simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities." ...INTERRUPTION... And exactly why was it that American women were not growing to their full potential? Because American Society (aka MEN) would not let them have jobs. Excuse me--careers. Us 1950's guys had careers which gave meaning to ours lives, a we did not want to let the women folk in on the secret of our happiness. The New Yorker continues: The book, which had a first printing of three thousand copies, went on to become the No.1 best-selling nonfiction paperback of 1964. Its author, in turn, became a celebrity, appearing on the newly born television talk shows, and an effective crusader giving speeches around the country. In the summer of 1966, Friedan co-founded the National Organization for Women-known by its acronym, NOW-and provided her supporters with a serious platform from which to shake up the status quo. These days, it is hard to remember that Friedan got a revolution going-that it was she who fought for equal pay, equal rights, day care, and legal abortion, so that other women could go on to examine their cervixes in consciousness-raising groups and muse wishfully on prehistoric matriarchies in the pages of Ms. For women under forty-the "I'm not a feminist, but, ..." generation-who are aware that Friedan was important but are vague about her exact contribution, she is a shadowy presence, an icon without-portfolio. Given her age (she is seventy-eight) and our short collective memory, this isn't so remarkable, What is surprising though, is how quickly she was pushed to the sidelines of the very movement she had founded. In 1972, when the fledgling National Women's Political Caucus gathered at the Democratic National Convention in Miami, Friedan lost her bid to be the official spokeswoman for the cause. Somewhere along the way, between the first stirrings of liberal activism and the increasingly radical, anti-male, and pro-lesbian tone that came to mark the women's movement as it gained momentum in the early seventies, Friedan was edged out of the spotlight in favor of other leaders- notably, Steinem and, briefly, Bella Abzug. "The cameras are clicking at Gloria," Nora Ephron observed in a gimlet-eyed account of the Miami gathering which she wrote for Esquire, "and Bella has swept in, trailed by a vortex of television crews, and there is Betty, off to the side, just slightly out of frame." ,,,,,,, _______________ooo___(_O O_)___ooo_______________ (_) From: "Mr. Coburn" I will tell you from first hand experience that in the 1950's my mom went to work because she wanted to talk to real, grown up, people and not stay at home, cleaning house, ironing (yeah, people actually did that), and watching soap operas. That she actually made a little dough after paying the lady that took care of us and the house work in her absence was probably irrelevant. Therefore, from my own perspective, my mom reduced wages that were being paid by virtue of the fact that she wanted to escape from a situation she did not like I don't feel beat up over it. or resentful, or deprived, or any of the other stuff that some might think would be in the offing. It was the way it was. The conclusion is that wages were reduced to the extent that all women were "liberated". Even the one's that might not have wanted it. masonc@ix.netcom.com wrote: > Jim, > > Any discussion of worker's wages and the role of working > women should at least include mention of the break-up of > the old-fashioned family. The divorce rate. The effect on > children. A graph of family income or women working should > also have a line showing the divorce rate. > > Economists' statistics must be *objective.* > Boys without fathers are not objective. > > Mason Hi, Since the rise in divorce and decline in marriage happened along with the rise of the women's movement and of working wives, I also just assumed that if there was any causality, it was that the latter would likely be the cause of the former. Women being more independent and less willing to put up with a man who gave them a hard time, etc. But just today I read an interesting reverse idea by Roger Scruton in the latest (Sept 27, 99) issue of National Review. He claims that: "The collapse of marriage is not the result of feminism, but the cause. Without lasting marriages, women have no real guarantee of security, and no reason for trusting men. If men cannot be trusted, then women set up on their own". Interesting idea. -- ,,,,,,, _______________ooo___(_O O_)___ooo_______________ (_) Subject: Re: Working Wives, Wages, & "The Feminine Mystique" Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 12:33:10 -0400 From: "OCWC" Organization: Bureau of Labor Statistics Newsgroups: alt.politics.economics, sci.econ References: 1 >Either we conclude that it is the higher income families >that most "need" the extra income from the working wife (snip) >Or there is another reason why wives decided to work? And >the fact that they worked reduced (or reduced the growth in) >that "average wage"? Not necessarily. If there are children, then the new wages of the wife must be greater than the costs of having the children in daycare. Note, these costs include things like the psychological costs of being a "bad" mom for not being there 24/7. Now if the wage a husband makes is a decent indicator of what the wife can make (which seems likely...the college educated tend to marry like), then those families where wages are low may be the LEAST likely to add a member to the labor force in bad times since they can't cover the costs of childcare. Daniel in D.C. Hi, Good reply, and a factor that I had not considered. But this would apply only to those years before the youngest child was in school. Perhaps wives with less education also have more kids, but even so, this is only a fraction of their (potential) working lives. A factor, but I bet not a major one. And an additional comment: I often read that day care is "too expensive" for the working women, while at the same time it does not provide enough income for the day care providers. But it is the same money, and we could apply this to just about everything: factory workers should be paid more but the things they make should cost less; farmers should get more money for what the sell, but consumers should pay less for food; tennants should pay lower rents but landlords should make more from their rental property, etc. At least in the case of child care, there is not usually a "middle man": the money is paid directly to the provider, and in Madison, does not even have taxes or social security deducted. (or has that changed since child care costs are now tax deductable??) ,,,,,,, _______________ooo___(_O O_)___ooo_______________ (_) jim blair (jeblair@facstaff.wisc.edu) Madison Wisconsin USA. This message was brought to you using biodegradable binary bits, and 100% recycled bandwidth. AND: Jim Blair wrote > >> ... Sure the wife is now more likely to be working than in >> (say) 1950. ... > "tonyp" wrote: > >Gee, I hope your mother doesn't hear you talking like that, Jim :-) > >Fewer housewives may have been getting _paid_ in 1950, but it's not >obvious to me that they were _working_ less. > >-- Tony Prentakis tcw@2xtreme.net (Tim Worstall): Another point has occured to me....and sorry I wasn't quicker off the mark in putting it down. This is about the social change that has happened as more women go out to paid work (about the only thing I do side with Freidan and Sontag on is that women have always worked, just inside the home in a non cash economy rather than outside in the cash economy). As they have done so, family incomes have risen to a much greater extent than individual incomes (not really that amazing a finding). House prices, which as another writer noted are normally family purchases have also risen. Why should anyone be surprised that if family incomes have risen, the major assets that families buy have also risen. Isn't it just a simple demonstration of demand led inflation ? No need for high rollers plotting it......just a very simple demonstration of something we all know about.....more money chasing the same items puts the price up. Tim Worstall AND: Do people now have more leisure time? See: Robinson and Godbey 1999. at: http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-01970-0.html QUOTE: Is it possible that Americans have more free time than they did thirty years ago? While few may believe it, research based on careful records of how we actually spend our time shows that we average more than an hour more free time per day than in the 1960s. Time-use experts John P. Robinson and Geoffrey Godbey received national attention when their controversial findings were first published in 1997. Now the book is updated, with a new chapter that includes results of the 1995-1997 data from the Americans' Use of Time Project. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- John P. Robinson is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Americans' Use of Time Project at the Survey Research Center at the University of Maryland. He is the senior author of several books dealing with the use of time and the quality of life, including The Rhythm of Everyday Life: How Soviet and American Citizens Use Time (Westview, 1988) and How Americans Use Time (Praeger, 1977). Geoffrey Godbey is Professor of Leisure Studies at Penn State University. His most recent book is Leisure in Your Life: An Exploration, 5th Edition (Venture Publishing, 1999).