In the United States, men have an average of two years older than their wife. When children born during a demographic boom come to marry, women are more numerous on the “ wedding market That men, their negotiation power is therefore less. For Shoshana Grossbard, the variations in women’s activity rate would thus be partly explained by demographic conditions on the marriage market.
After five decades of continuous increase, the participation rate of American women in the labor market began a decline in 1998. It went from 76.7 % in 1997 at 75.3% in 2005. As early as 2006, the White House Council of Economic Advisers expressed its concern in a report addressed to the congress: a slowdown in the growth of female workforce could weigh on future economic growth. This concern was unjustified: after having reached its lowest rate in 2005, the participation rate of women in the labor market started to increase, although a slower pace. It is nevertheless interesting to reflect on the possible explanations of this unforeseen fall in the participation of American women in employment.
Can this decline explain the general slowdown in the job offer, as Claudia Goldin, professor of economics at Harvard University says ? Insofar as male use has not fell significantly, this argument seems unsatisfactory to us. Claudia Goldin also defends the idea of a “ natural rate The female job that would have been reached in the United States. But is it “ natural That the rate of young active women is higher by around 10% in Scandinavian countries than in the United States ? The argument that we propose suggests that the drop in the participation rate of women in employment has its origin in the fluctuations of the matrimonial market, themselves caused by previous fluctuations in fertility. This explanation has the merit of accounting for the general tendency of participation of women in employment as well as the differences observed according to the age class.
Falls at the female participation rate in employment recorded at the start of the decade mainly concerned young women. Thus, the share of women active among women aged twenty-five to thirty fell by almost 4%, from 77% in 2000 to 73% in 2004. Conversely, the participation in the employment of women aged fifty to fifty-five years was stable during this same period. Younger women are more exposed to social pressures concerning the balance to be found between work and family. “” The time of active families may have reached the limit of its extension capacity », Suggests Suzanne Bianchi, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, during an interview with the New York Times in March 2006. But concerning the fall in female participation in employment, this argument is in no way convincing: raising a child became more difficult in 2005 than in 2000 ? Have employers become strictest during these five years ? If such trends are real, why they did not last longer ?
In order to better understand these recent trends in the participation rate of young women in employment, it is important to keep in mind the fact that most young women who left the world of work at the start of the decade did not have their financial independence and that they lived as a couple (marriage or cohabitation). Their withdrawal from the world of work therefore meant that their husband or partner became solely responsible for the couple’s financial contribution, which testifies to a fairly traditional model of the sharing of roles in the couple.
In 1980, at the University of Southern California, sociologist David Heer and I developed a hypothesis which seems to be useful here in order to explain these surprising upheavals of trends, the hypothesis of “ matrimonial pressure “(“ Squeeze Marriage ” in English). This hypothesis then led me to anticipate the decline in the participation rate of women in employment in an article with Clive Granger, Nobel Prize in economics, published in French in the journal Population.
Women are “ under pressure On the matrimonial market when there is an overabundance of single women compared to the number of men arranged at marriage, this imbalance thus offering men a greater ease of finding wives or partners. Conversely, when men are the subject of this “ matrimonial pressure », The marriage market becomes more favorable to women. That the “ pressure »Concerns men or women, a large part of participants in the marriage market in the United States respects the traditional distribution of roles in the couple, with an main man responsible for the financial contribution of the household and a woman in charge of all activities related to the home. In this context, the marriage market can be reinterpreted as a particular labor market in which women produce a household type work that men benefit and which they are willing to finance. Such work, which I have appointed as “ Matrimonial work In theory, in theory can be produced indifferently by men or by women. But in practice, it is essentially women who take care of it and therefore “ sell ” their “ matrimonial work ». When the “ matrimonial pressure »Affects on women, the market of” female matrimonial work »Becomes a buyer market. When the “ matrimonial pressure »Is on men, this same market becomes a sellers market. David Heer and I have hypothesized that women have more negotiation power within their marriage if their relationship with their husband began in a context where the “ matrimonial pressure »Pissed on men and not on women. The hypothesis of this market also implies the existence of what I have called “ quasi-priest Remunerating the marital work of women.
It is impossible for us to quantify these “ quasi-priest “, But we can measure a number of benefits obtained by a housewife (full time or partial). One of these profits is to make the spouse responsible for the payment of more invoices and can possibly release women from their need to work full time. For women who “ sell “Their matrimonial work on a marriage market in” sellers “, Their greatest latitude to negotiate inside their marriage can take the form of additional pressure on husbands to earn household money, and thus a lower probability for these women to participate in the labor market.
On average, men marry at a higher age than women. In the United States, the age difference between the spouses is about two years (this difference has not changed significantly over time). Thus, the wedding market for women aged 25, includes a significant number of 27 -year -old men. Take the example of a 25-year-old woman from the Baby-Boom who entered the job market in 1975. During this year, the number of 27-year-old men was much lower than that of women aged 25 (indeed, there were fewer births in 1948 than in 1950), the “ matrimonial pressure So weighed on women. Consequently, women from the baby boom wishing to marry themselves in front of a buyer market. For women from the baby boom wishing to “ to work As housewives, their lowest margin of negotiations within their marriage could have resulted in a less strong capacity to ask their husbands for money than on a sellers market. Whether they liked it or not, these women had to work.
With the fall in births initiated in 1960, the marriage market became more and more favorable to women. When women aged 25 born at the time of the drop in births (“ baby-bust In English) were looking for a husband in 1998, there were a lot of 27 -year -old men on the market, more children being born in 1971 in 1973. Women born in 1973, at the lowest of this hollow, wishing to devote themselves to “ matrimonial work So found themselves faced with a sellers market, therefore granting them a greater margin of negotiation. This allowed them to obtain from their spouses that they become the only responsible for household income, thereby authorizing their wives to leave the labor market. If this interpretation turns out to be correct, it seems to us that the relatively low participation of young American women in employment in 2005 could be more explained by the fluctuations in the marriage market than by an alleged greater difficulty in leading professional and family life. In fact, when I studied with Catalina Amuedo-Dorants the figures concerning the period from 1965 to 2005, we highlighted how the changes of “ matrimonial pressure EXPLAIN A LOTS A LOT PROGUST OF THE ACTIVITY Variations in the participation of American women in employment.
I wrote in an editorial for the San Diego Union-Tribune published in March 2006 that “ Feminist bosses and activists who deplore the current fall in the female participation rate in employment should not be worried about it. The pendulum is about to return to its original position. The drop in births stopped in 1977, just when the baby boom echo started. Take women born in 1980 on the wedding market: on average, they may marry men born in 1978. Just like their mothers from the baby boom, these “ echo »All the likely to end up at the heart of a” matrimonial pressure Weighing on women (although it is far from being as important in intensity as it was not for their mothers). I then predicted that the entry of these men and women echoing baby boom into the marriage market would be accompanied by a lower margin of negotiation for women born in 1980 wishing to work as housewives. These would be less likely to obtain from their husbands the luxury of being able to leave the world of work and find a companion likely to take full responsibility for household income. We are now witnessing the realization of another of my predictions: the participation rate of young women in employment experienced a clear increase in 2008 compared to previous years. The percentage of women active among women aged 25 to 30 increased from 73% in 2004 to 76% in 2008.
A more systematic and detailed analysis, such as that which I led with Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes, would be necessary for the interpretation of this latest trend. It would be interesting to reassess our study in light of the figures covering the period from 2005 to 2010. This period should be characterized not only by cyclical fluctuations but also by movements under significant marriage conditions, since women around thirties, which are also the most likely to leave the world of work, first belong to the Baby-Bust and then to the generations of the Baby-Boom echo.
Translated from English by Marion Naccache.