CHANGES IN AMERICAN WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT: FACTS, FICTION, AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Contrary to The New York Times’ and other media outlets’ coverage of the alleged “Opt-Out Revolution,” in which they claim an increasing percentage of educated professional women are choosing to leave their jobs to raise children, Christine Percheski, the Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at Harvard University, found that the percentage of educated women who are working full-time year round, including those with young children, has actually increased over the last five decades.  Her research bears significant policy implications, as Opting-Out assertions allude that a trend of women choosing to leave their professions rather than external factors such as institutional gender discrimination are responsible for the gender gap among the professional elite.

In Percheski’s presentation at WAPPP’s Gender and Policy Seminar in February, “Changes in American Women’s Employment: Facts, Fiction, and Policy Implications,” she described how her examination of college-educated women in professional and managerial occupations born between 1906 and 1975 negates any claims of an Opting-Out phenomenon. 

Percheski found that there have been dramatic increases in professional women’s employment, but not in men’s. When examining changes in fertility among professional women, she found a change in the timing of child bearing: there has been a decrease in the percentage of 30- to 34-year-old women who have young children, with the majority waiting until they are between the ages of 35 and 39 to have children.  However, despite this change in timing of first births, there has not been a change in the percentage of professional women who are having children. 

Is there any validity to the Opting-Out claims by the media? Percheski found that among women who are not working, a larger percentage has advanced degrees or were in elite professions than among previous cohorts. However, she notes this finding does not illustrate that more educated women are “opting out.” Moreover, an increase in the percentage of educated women among the non-working is not equivalent to an increase in the total percentage of educated and professional women who are not working. She explains that the increase in the percentage of educated women among non-workers is due to a general increase of education among all women. So who is opting-out? Percheski reported that most non-working professional women are married women with young children and have husbands who earn exceptionally high salaries. 

Percheski warns that the lack of an opting-out phenomenon is not synonymous with gender equality in the work place and does not mean that there are no longer challenges for working mothers. For example, she suggests that policymakers need to know that gender equality in elite professions may be hard to achieve if work hours continue to rise and that factors other than children, such as a husband’s employment and income, affect women’s employment.  Important steps toward gender equality within the workforce may include providing more quality part-time opportunities, anti-discrimination policies, and perhaps a cultural change that puts less emphasis on face-time and excessive work demands. 

The Gender and Policy Seminar Series is made possible through the generous support of the Harvard Kennedy School's Women's Leadership Board.

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