American Women in Transition. - book reviews

Business Horizons, March-April, 1990 by Cindy S. Aron

American Women in Transition

In American Women in Transition, Suzanne M. Bianchi and Daphne Spain used data from the last three decennial censuses to offer a comprehensive picture of the way in which women's lives have changed since 1960. American women have been moving in increasing numbers into the paid labor force. A variety of other demographic and social changes have accompanied this transition: women are marrying later, bearing fewer children, and staying in school longer. Change, however, is only part of the story of this book. Certain aspects of women's lives have remained much the same. Despite their increased labor force participation, women continue to bear the major responsibility for domestic and family duties. Additionally, women's wages have not kept pace with their increasing participation in the labor market. Their pay continues to be low, and the discrepancies between females' and males' wages have remained quite stable.

This book is useful not only because it carefully documents these major transitions in women's lives, but also because of its comprehensive analysis of the numerous changes in marriage, childbearing, living arrangements, education, labor force participation, and wages over the last 30 years. Many of the smaller but still revealing discussions embedded in each chapter offer the reader a variety of important findings. For example, we learn that by 1980 the "typical" American family - mom, dad, and kids - actually represented only 30 percent of American families. This means that more and more women are spending large portions of their adult lives outside the context of the traditional family - either living independently as young, unmarried women, living as divorced or single mothers supporting children, or living alone as widows. Such statistics should serve as important reminders to policymakers who assume that the traditional nuclear family is the norm and that most women spend the majority of their lives under the care of a man.

Bianchi and Spain's discussion of wages provides another example of the work's usefulness. The fact that a woman with graduate training still earns less on average than a man with a high school diploma is an unsettling but certainly not new finding. What we learn from Bianchi and Spain, however, is which categories of employment are particularly egregious when it comes to wage differentials between men and women. Both managerial occupations and sales occupations, for example, have large gaps between male and female earnings. The good news is that young women seem to be closing that gap, although young women in these occupations still earn only 60 to 77 percent of what men earn. It remains to be seen whether the slight advantage of these young women will be erased when, or if, they take time off to bear children.

This book is often more successful in describing the changes in women's lives than in determining their cause. For example, is it the delay in childbearing that leads to greater educational, career, and therefore, financial assets? Or is it the desire for education, career, and financial stability that makes a woman put off having children? While Bianchi and Spain admit the "causality of the relationship is unclear," they hypothesize, reasonably, that a woman's decision to put off marriage and childbearing is likely a response both to opportunities in the workplace and improved abilities to control childbearing.

The authors pay close attention to the differences in the experiences of black and white women and come up with some interesting conclusions. Black women remain the least well-paid of all men or women, but they have improved their economic positions dramatically over the last 30 years, raising their average income from 51 percent of that of white women to 91 percent. And although all women experience a deterioration in economic status as the result of a divorce, researchers have found that divorce is less disastrous economically for black women than for white women. The reason is that black women, although initially worse off financially than white women, are able to recoup more lost income by going to work or by receiving assistance from other members of their households.

Bianchi and Spain conclude that both black and white women are increasingly forced to perform a "balancing act," juggling the demands of a household and motherhood with those of paid labor. Women who are "in transition" - and this characterizes the majority of women today - find the burdens of family, home, and child care are not being shared equally with husbands.

American Women in Transition is, above all, a very useful book - for a variety of people and for a variety of reasons. The historian or sociologist would find here the data to try to understand how women's lives, and consequently the lives of children and men as well, have changed over the last 30 years. Policymakers would do well to consult this book when they determine the need for child care and try to sort out the issue of pay equity. Leaders of business and industry should be familiar with the findings of Bianchi and Spain if they are to respond to the needs and problems of the women who now make up a substantial proportion of their work force.