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largely by the fact that 22 percent of male employees are in skilled craft and similar jobs, compared with 2 percent of the women. Among white-collar jobs, much larger proportions of men than women are in managerial or administrative work. In other words, although women have made inroads into some occupations dominated by men, they are still concentrated in traditional women's jobs. Many jobs in the service industries can be described as extensions of homemaking. Moreover, these industries and retail trade provide more opportunities for part-time employment than other industries. The service trades also employ full-time workers at times outside the standard 9-5 o'clock schedule found in many industries and thus permit women to work when their husbands or older children are home to care for young children.

Nearly all women college graduates who work outside the home are in white-collar occupations, with 70 percent holding professional and technical jobs. By contrast, of the women workers who have not completed high school, half are service workers and operatives. Among women workers who have completed high school but have not gone to college, almost half are in clerical work and a tenth are in professional and managerial work, but about 30 percent are service workers or operatives.

Women now account for 1 out of 11 physicians and more than 1 out of 6 medical students. Almost 1 out of 20 lawyers and 1 out of 5 law students is a woman. Women are still rare in skilled blue-collar occupations. About 37 percent of the bus drivers in 1974 were women, but many of these drove school buses part time.

Proportionately fewer women than men are selfemployed, though self-employed women in nonagricultural industries now number about 1.5 million. Most of these women are in service and retail trade industries; they operate beauty shops, laundries, dressmaking establishments, child care facilities, nursing homes, or some sort of educational service (table 22).

Earnings and Income Contribution

Like men, women get most of their income from paid employment. More than 75 percent of the aggregate income of women in 1973 was from wages and salaries, about 10 percent was from social security and similar benefits, and only 3 percent was from welfare and public assistance payments; the rest is accounted for by investment income, self-employment, and other sources.

A woman's earnings are dependent on such variables as education and occupation. Among women 25 years old and over, those with 5 or more years of college had a median income of $8,935 in 1973, compared with $6,215 for those with 4 years of college and $3,970 for those with a high school diploma only. By occupation, median earnings for women who were employed

year round full time in clerical jobs were about $6,500; as operatives, $5,420; as professional-technical workers, $9,100; and as managers and administrators, $8,000. In each of these four broad occupational groups, women's earnings, on the average, were considerably less than those of men who worked year round full time: clerical-61 percent of men's earnings; operatives56 percent; professional-technical 64 percent; managers-administrators-53 percent. The lowest ratio of women's-to-men's year-round full-time earnings was 38 percent among sales workers; the ratio for all employed was 57 percent (table 23).

With the dramatic rise in the proportion of married women who work, even among mothers with preschoolage children, the multiearner family has become more prominent (table 24). In nearly half of all husband-wife families, both husband and wife were earners in 1973. The contribution of the wives' earnings to family income varies from the 26-percent median for all wives with earnings to 38 percent where the woman works year round full time (table 25).

In a recently published summary of the weekly earnings of men and women in May 1974, the overall trend from 1967 to 1974 shows that median usual weekly earnings of full-time women workers remained about three-fifths that of men (tables 26 and 27). During this same 7-year period, the earnings of both men and women rose about 60 percent; however, after allowing for inflation, the rise was only 10 percent. The last earnings survey in May 1974 showed that women in full-time jobs earned an average of $124 a week. Earnings of women working full time varied from $49 for private household workers to $188 for professional and technical workers. The following tabulation shows median weekly earnings in May 1974 of women employed full time in various occupational groups and women's earnings as a percentage of men's:

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married women earn less than single women. In large part, this is because wives typically interrupt their I work careers and are not able to build up the seniority that makes them eligible for higher pay in many firms. In addition, many wives who reenter the labor market in the middle years must take starting level jobs.

The higher proportion of men in craft and other skilled blue-collar jobs and in managerial work has been briefly discussed earlier. Average pay is also relatively low in trade and service industries in which employ ment of women is concentrated (table 28).

The narrowest gap for full-time workers is in the Postal Service, where the median weekly earnings of women are 96 percent of the earnings of men. All Postal employees have the same quasi-public employer and are covered by the same pay scale, and there is a heavy concentration of men and women at the same skill level.

Smaller proportions of working women than of working men are union members, or they work in unionized establishments where pay levels are higher on the average. Women comprise 4 out of 10 members of the labor force but only slightly more than 1 out of 5 union members (about 1 out of 4 members of unions and associations). Half of the industries in which women comprise at least 40 percent of the work force-services, finance, textile manufacturing, local and Federal government-have fewer than 25 percent of their work force organized. The white-collar occupations in which women predominate are also less organized than bluecollar work.

In general, also, the difference between the earnings of men and women within an industry was smaller in unionized than in nonunionized establishments. Unionized workers, both men and women, earned substantially more than nonunion workers. Differences between earnings of unionized and nonunionized workers reflect, at least in part, differences in the industries in which they are concentrated and also differences in establishment size. Part-time workers are also more often employed in nonunion establishments than are full-time workers (tables 29 and 30).

Recent Changes in Women's Labor Force Activities Due to Social and Other Trends

The current role of women in the U.S. economy, outlined in the previous section, represents great changes over the past 2 or 3 decades and indeed in some cases, over the past 5 years. Many changes are still in process, and it is difficult to forecast the rate of labor force participation and the occupations in which women will be employed a decade from now.

The increased employment of women has been a major factor in the continued rise in the Nation's

standard of living. In turn, the increased participation of women in work outside the home is traceable to a number of factors, including development or increased availability of goods and services that made housework easier; more widespread acceptance of family planning and development of new birth control techniques; a change in society's attitude toward working wives and mothers-in part a reflection of higher levels of education; the increasing demand for workers in white-collar and service jobs; the continued movement of the population out of agriculture; rising divorce rates and other factors leading to increased proportions of families headed by women; and legislation and court decisions prohibiting employment discrimination based on sex and promoting equal pay for equal work. These factors are themselves interrelated-for example, presumably legislation and even court decisions are affected by demands for added employment opportunities as women become better educated and less burdened by household tasks.

Farm Women

In the 1950's and early 1960's, population shifts from farm to city brought many women nearer to job opportunities and reduced the number who did unpaid family farmwork. Farm women now account for a relatively small proportion of the U.S. population and those who live on farms remain less likely (40 percent) than other women (about 45 percent) to be employed outside the home (table 31). Part of the difference in their participation in the labor force is explained by the fact that they are much older, on the average, than nonfarm women. Half of all adult women residing on farms in 1973 were 45 or older, compared with 29%1⁄2 years for nonfarm women (table 32). Still, 4 out of 10 farm women do hold paid jobs and two-thirds of the employed farm women work in nonagricultural industries.

Age and Working Mothers

In the past decade, the growth in labor force participation has been concentrated among women under age 35; the fact that about half of the women in the American labor force are under this age reflects in part the very rapid increase in this age group in the total population resulting from high birth rates immediately after World War II. In part it is due to factors described earlier, which contribute more to increased labor force participation of this age group than to work by older women. Most notable has been the steep cut in the birth rates of young married women in recent years. In addition, work by younger women has been facilitated by changed attitudes toward the role of women and especially mothers (which have also made it easier for women of child-bearing age to work

outside the home); higher educational achievements, including the increased proportion who have completed college, and expanding professional, technical, and clerical job opportunities. Also, there is desire for additional income as young families face rapidly rising prices.

The number of working mothers with children under age 18 increased 12 percent between 1970 and 1974. Nearly 27 million children had working mothers in 1974-22.2 million in families with both parents present and 4.6 million in families headed by women. Between 1970 and 1974, the 1.2-million net increase in the total number of children with working mothers occurred almost exclusively in the families headed by women (tables 33 and 34).

Female Family Heads

The growing proportion of women who are heads of families and the increased pressures on these women to work also affected the overall increase in women's labor force participation. In April 1950, only 9.4 percent of all families were headed by women. By March 1974, the proportion was 12.4 percent. Half of this entire increase took place between 1970 and 1974. The proportion of divorced and separated women in the population grew, and an increasing number of single

women also became heads of families.

The divorce rate in the United States increased to 3.5 per 1,000 persons in the population in 1970 and was 4.5 percent in 1974 (compared with 2.1 to 2.6 percent from 1950 to 1967). The labor force participation rate for divorcees age 20 to 54 is 80 percent, reflecting primarily their need for additional income but also in part the fact that the proportion of divorcees with preschool-age children is considerably lower than for married or separated women. Even so, with children under age 6, divorcees have a much higher participation rate (66 percent) than the other mothers of young children.

Of the 6.8 million women who headed families in 1974, 3.7 million were in the labor force (table 35). Most of these divorced, separated, widowed, or single women have children under 18 (table 36). Despite the large number of women workers who are family heads, only slightly more than half of all women family heads in the population as a whole (compared with 84 percent of the men family heads) are in the work force. Women family heads tend to be a somewhat older group, on the average, than married women. In addition, many of the older women are ill-equipped to earn an adequate living; they either have had insufficient preparation for today's work, or irregular work histories.

Education

Nearly three-fourths of the women in the labor force have completed high school (12 years or more of

education) (table 37). The greater amount of education a women has received the more likely she is to be in the labor force and the less likely she is to be unemployed (tables 38 and 39). About 1 out of 2 women high school graduates (51 percent) is working or looking for work (for married women the proportion is less-46 percent). However, for women college graduates, the proportions in the labor force are greater roughly 6 out of 10 married and formerly married women are in the labor force compared with 8 out of 10 single women.

Although impressive gains have been made in educational levels for both men and women, the average educational level of men workers in the United States now is approximately the same as for women. Higher proportions of women than men workers have completed high school but smaller proportions have completed college. Twenty years ago, women workers were, on the average, considerably better educated than men. The removal of this gap is explained in part by the educational assistance made available to the millions of veterans after World War II. In 1952 the median school years completed by working women was 12.0, while for men it was 10.4 years. Today 12.5 is the median years of school completed by both men and women workers. The more modest increase in the

educational level of women workers since 1940 can be associated with the rapid growth of the number of women in the work force. The labor market in 1940 was more oriented toward the better educated women, but after World War II and the shift in employment concentration from goods to service-producing industries, jobs for less educated women became more plentiful.

Race

Most women workers (87 percent) in the United States are white. Work force participation rates have been historically lower for white women than for women of Negro and other races. At the present time, however, this difference appears to be narrowing, primarily because of the participation rates of young women-higher among white than black teenagers and much the same among young women 20 to 24 years old of all races.

The longstanding differences in married women's work experience by race and presence and age of children was evident in 1973 when black mothers in husbandwife families continued to have a higher rate of work experience and proportionately more had children than did white mothers. Despite this, their earnings were not enough to bring black family income up to white income although they narrowed the overall gap. For example, in families where the father was employed, 58 percent of the black children and 40 percent of the whites had mothers in the labor force. Yet, the $13,010 median income in 1973 among the multiworker families of black children was substantially below the

1 median for the families of white children with employed fathers ($15,000+), regardless of their mothers' labor force status (table 40).

Occupational and Industrial Shifts

Such changes as have occurred in the occupational profile of women and the industries in which they are employed in greatest numbers have reflected primarily the shift from a predominantly goods-producing to service-dominated economy rather than any drastic movement of women into occupations formerly the province of men. Actually, since women were already employed more extensively in the growing sectors of the economy than in other industries, the industry shifts were relatively minor. Between 1964 and 1974, most of the 10.4 million women labor force entrants or

reentrants found jobs in the fastest growing industry divisions: services 3.0 million, government-2.6 million, wholesale and retail trade-2.4 million, manufacturing 1.3 million. During the 30-year span from 1940 to 1970, about 60 percent of all service industry employees have been women. Manufacturing has declined to fourth place as an employer of women; some of the nondurable goods industries in which they have been concentrated-textile mill products and food and kindred items have introduced processes and equipment that have permitted output to be expanded without corresponding increases employment.

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Women have registered gains in some professions and other occupations that have historically been "men's occupations," but most of these changes are only beginning to be significant (see a section later on women in nontraditional jobs).

With the growth in the importance of white-collar occupations, the occupational pattern for women changed from half blue- half white-collar to one in which more than 60 percent of the women employed outside agriculture are in white-collar jobs. Almost all the gain was in clerical and sales jobs, where employment increased from 30 to about 45 percent of all employed women. At the end of this period, professional and managerial and related jobs employed 1 out of 4 men, compared with 15 percent in 1940, but there was little gain in the proportion of women in such jobs.

Over half of the entire increase in women's jobs in government between 1964 and 1974 occurred at the State and local levels in education. This increase in

Occupation

Craft and related occupations.

educational employment opportunities is not likely to continue, but opportunities in health and welfare services will presumably continue to grow.

The rate of expansion of retail and wholesale trade is expected to slow during the rest of the decade because of the greater use of computers, automated equipment, self-service stores, and vending machines.

There has been a substantial increase in the number and proportion of women who are self-employed, in part because many women have traditionally been proprietors of establishments in the growing service sector. In 1974, women constituted a fourth (26 percent) of all self-employed workers, compared with 17 percent in 1940. The gain in self-employment was proportionately somewhat greater than their increase in labor force participation.

Earnings

Over the past 7 years (May 1967 to May 1974), overall weekly earnings of women workers increased from $78 to $124, on the average, while men's pay increased from $125 to $204 (increases of 59 and 63 percent, respectively).

In the future, it can be expected that as lifetime work experience of women increases and women are employed in greater numbers in higher paying occupations, the gap in earnings between men and women will be reduced. The limited inroads women have made into higher paying men's occupations are described in the following section.

Women in Nontraditional Jobs

Almost from birth, girls in the United States have been taught to conform to certain more or less stereotyped roles. Generally, these teachings influence their education and career decisions. Until recently, most American women have chosen occupations that are thought of as women's jobs. Many are dead end and low paying. The occupations in which large numbers are concentrated were described earlier.

Today, efforts to end this stereotyping are beginning and the proportion of women entering traditionally male careers is growing. However, the most recent census data available-for 1970-indicate that while employment of women in the traditionally male-skilled occupations increased substantially, the proportion of women in these jobs is still very small, as the tabulation indicates.

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Carpenters....

Mechanics and repairers.

Bus drivers......

Managerial occupations..

Engineers...

Lawyers and judges..

598-511 O-76-2

277,000

1970 495,000

Percent increase

1960

1970

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Women have apparently made even more rapid inroads into skilled and professional jobs since 1970 (table 41). Information from the 1974 Current Population Survey indicates that the number of women in managerial jobs may have increased by about 600,000 since 1970, or about 50 percent. Some indication of further growth is provided by the fact that the proportion of law students who are women increased from 7 percent in 1969 to 20 percent in 1974, and the proportion of women among all medical students increased

from 9 to more than 18 percent. Vocational school data show that the number of women enrolled in technical programs has increased by 44 percent in the past 5 years, while the increase in the number enrolled in trade and industrial training programs amounted to 80 percent. The precedent established by the landmark equal opportunity conciliation agree. ments of the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. and Bank America should also result in opening additional managerial and other high paying jobs to women.

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