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Title: Women's Work Pathways Across the Life Course
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Damaske, Sarah
Frech, Adrianne
Women's Work Pathways Across the Life Course
Demography 53,2 (April 2016): 365-391.
Also: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13524-016-0464-z
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Employment; Family Constraints; Labor Force Participation; Life Course; Women

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Despite numerous changes in women's employment in the latter half of the twentieth century, women's employment continues to be uneven and stalled. Drawing from data on women's weekly work hours in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), we identify significant inequality in women's labor force experiences across adulthood. We find two pathways of stable full-time work for women, three pathways of part-time employment, and a pathway of unpaid labor. A majority of women follow one of the two full-time work pathways, while fewer than 10 % follow a pathway of unpaid labor. Our findings provide evidence of the lasting influence of work–family conflict and early socioeconomic advantages and disadvantages on women’s work pathways. Indeed, race, poverty, educational attainment, and early family characteristics significantly shaped women’s work careers. Work–family opportunities and constraints also were related to women's work hours, as were a woman’s gendered beliefs and expectations. We conclude that women's employment pathways are a product of both their resources and changing social environment as well as individual agency. Significantly, we point to social stratification, gender ideologies, and work–family constraints, all working in concert, as key explanations for how women are "tracked" onto work pathways from an early age.
Bibliography Citation
Damaske, Sarah and Adrianne Frech. "Women's Work Pathways Across the Life Course." Demography 53,2 (April 2016): 365-391.