The Structure of Women's Labor Force Participation in Comparative Perspective

Becky Pettit, University of Washington
Jennifer L. Hook, University of Washington

One of the most dramatic social transformations of the latter half of the twentieth century involved the massive influx of women into the paid labor force. The large scale movement of women into wage labor after World War II has occurred in every OECD country, although the rate of growth in women's entry into the labor force and rates of part-time employment vary substantially across nations. In this paper we use social survey data, institutional variables, and multi-level methods to provide an integrative assessment of demographic, structural, and institutional effects on women's labor force participation, involvement in part-time work, and occupational segregation. This research provides a comprehensive analysis of both structural and institutional arguments for women's involvement in the paid labor force across countries and helps clarify our understanding of cross-national variation in women's employment.