Projecting female labor force participation from sex-role attitudes

Abstract

Beliefs and attitudes about the appropriate activities and behavior for men and women in our society have changed greatly during the last decade. Apparently this shift in sex-role attitudes has not been restricted to select subgroups of the population; women from all walks of life have undergone similar changes in beliefs since the mid-1960s (Mason, Czajka, and Arber, 1976). Increasing acceptance of nontraditional, and especially nonfamilial, roles for women has been credited with causing, or at least facilitating, the rapid rise in female labor force participation over the last 5 to 10 years, since the less traditional a woman’s outlook the more likely she is to be currently employed and to have a history of labor force activity. If changing attitudes do indeed result in more female workers, then knowledge about this relationship may be of use in projecting employment of women during the next several decades. Projections of female labor force participation done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics have consistently underestimated growth in the female work force (Johnson, 1973). Inclusion of a wider range of variables than currently used in making these projections may improve their accuracy. Since women’s sex-role attitudes appear to have a strong association with their market activity, such attitudes should be assessed for their possible usefulness, along with other economic, social, and demographic variables, in projecting female labor force behavior. In this paper evidence on the causal connection between sex-role attitudes and employment of bornen is presented and evaluated. The effects of sex-role attitudes