Suchergebnisse

The demand for female labor is a central explanatory component of macrostructural theories of gender stratification. This study analyzes how the structural demand for female labor affects gender differences in labor force participation. The authors develop a measure of the gendered demand for labor by indexing the degree to which the occupational structure is skewed toward usually male or female occupations. Using census data from 1910 through 1990 and National Longitudinal Sample of Youth (NLSY) data from 261 contemporary U.S. labor markets, the authors show that the gender difference in labor force participation covaries across time and space with this measure of the demand for female labor.

Abstract Nonmetropolitan‐metropolitan differences in the United States are large and growing, but we know relatively little about how they interact with gender differences. Using data from the CPS, the Census PUMS, and the GSS, we find nonmetropolitan and metropolitan areas are quite similar in the gender gap in earnings and in rates of married women's labor force participation. Occupational sex segregation is higher and some gender attitudes are a few percentage points less egalitarian in nonmetropolitan areas. Each of these dimensions of gender stratification has been declining over the last two decades and the declines are roughly similar in nonmetropolitan and metropolitan areas. Variations in gender stratification have been greater over time than across place. Thus, while both place and gender are important dimensions of stratification, there appears to have been little interaction between the two.