The Rise and Decline of the Male Breadwinner Family? An Overview of the Debate (original) (raw)

Socio-historical paths of the male breadwinner model - an explanation of cross-national differences1

The British Journal of Sociology, 2004

It is often assumed that in the historical transformation to modern industrial society, the integration of women into the economy occurred everywhere as a three-phase process: in pre-modern societies, the extensive integration of women into societal production; then, their wide exclusion with the shift to industrial society; and finally, their re-integration into paid work during the further course of modernization. Results from the author's own international comparative study of the historical development of the family and the economic integration of women have shown that this was decidedly not the case even for western Europe.

Women's Employment and Welfare Regimes (UNRISD, 2002)

Women's employment and the policies facilitating it, constraining it or ignoring it are central to contemporary social politics across the developed countries. Social policies and other political interventions, such as equal-opportunity legislation, are hardly the only influences on women's employment. We must also point to changes in labour markets and the demand for women's labour (as employers tend to see labour in gender-specific ways); women's rising education and aspirations, and their increased productivity and real wages; the decline of men's wages; the decline of fertility; increasing individualization and the rising instability of marriage. But social policy is also significant, if not so much for increasing women's employment, then for shaping the patterns of women's employment, especially the continuity of their participation over the life course, and the conditions under which they work-as well as for helping to constitute the stakes in gendered social politics. And in this respect, even as women's labour force participation has increased everywhere, there are significant cross-national differences in the policies and politics affecting women's employment.

Female breadwinner families: Their existence, persistence and sources

Journal of Sociology, 2005

We develop a typology for understanding couple households where the female is the major earner -what we term female breadwinner households -and test it using data from the first two waves of the HILDA Survey. We distinguish temporary from persistent female breadwinner households and hypothesise, and confirm, that these two groups diverge on demographic, socio-economic status (SES), labour market and family commitment characteristics. Among the persistent group we further distinguish those couples where the dominance of a female earner is related to economic factors and those where it appears associated with a purposeful gender equity strategy. We again hypothesise and confirm that these household types significantly diverge, finding that men in the economic group exhibit low SES, poor labour market position, and low levels of commitment to family, while both the women and men in the equity type often achieve positive outcomes regarding gender equity and economic and family success.

Rosemary Crompton Beyond the 'male breadwinner model'

One of the major changes in the organisation of 'work' over the last forty years has been in the division of labour between men and women. I use the 'male breadwinner' model as an ideal type from which to begin to analyse these changes. Here I will draw together a number of themes. First, there is the question of national variations in the way in which the male breadwinner model has evolved and been modified. A major sub-theme structuring the discussion here will be the question of equality -both between women and men, and within society as a whole. My recent research has shown that different national patterns of gender arrangements are crosscut by systematic similarities in the way in which men and women organise their lives, in which occupational differences play a major role. This raises the important question of the significance -or otherwise -of individual choice in shaping the gender division of labour, and the nature of gender relations, amongst particular individuals and their families. Finally, there is the question of how individual choices are reflected in the transformation of institutions and gender norms, and vice versa.

WOMEN'S WORK AND WORKING WOMENThe Demand for Female Labor

Gender & Society, 2001

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.

The Politics of Women's Economic Independence

Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 2009

We identify the political conditions that shape the economic position of married/cohabiting women and of the economically most vulnerable group of women-single mothers. Specifically, we examine the determinants of reductions in single mothers' poverty rate due to taxes and transfers, and women's wages relative to spouses'/ partners' wages. The Luxembourg Income Study archive yields an unbalanced panel with 71 observations on 15 countries. The principal determinants of poverty reduction due to taxes and transfers are left government, constitutional veto points, and welfare generosity. The relative wage of women in couples is a function mainly of female labor force participation, part time work among women, and women's mobilization. In explaining the causal pathways to these outcomes, we highlight the interrelationships of welfare state, care, and labor market policies. Over two centuries or so of industrial development, the average situation of women with respect to fertility, family roles, political participation, and access to education and to occupations outside the household has changed enormously (Nolan and Lenski