Warum Frauen weniger verdienen als Männer – und wie sich das entwickelte
Die Ökonomin Betsey Stevenson hat “Career and Family”, das Buch von Ökonomie-Nobelpreisträgerin Claudia Goldin, im Journal of Economic Literature rezensiert.
Goldin, eine der interessantesten Ökonom:innen unserer Zeit, liefert darin eine kleine Geschichte der Erwerbsarbeit und Rollenbilder von studierten Frauen in den USA.
She categorizes these generations into five groups, each defined by their unique constraints and aspirations. From the pioneering women of the late nineteenth century to the “have it all” generation born after 1958, Goldin traces how shifts in societal norms, labor market demands, and technological advancements have reshaped women’s roles and choices. Each group struggles and learns, passing on crucial information to the next generation, helping to illuminate the path forward.
Gruppe 1
Women born at the end of the nineteenth century formed group 1: a small group of women that went to college either knowing, or quickly discovering, that they could have family or career, but not both. These college-educated women were less likely than their less educated sisters to marry and have families. Goldin credits this generation with launching the centuries-long quest for gender equality. But most realized that their ambitions were not compatible with family life.
Gruppe 2
The daughters of this generation—Goldin’s group 2—were determined to accomplish more than their mothers. The shift away from physical labor to intellectual work helped propel group 2 into the labor market; demand for office workers was surging and women disproportionately took those jobs. Yet, marriage and family life were ultimately incompatible with careers; this generation had a job and then left that job to have a family.
Gruppe 3
Group 3 was shaped by the demographic forces of the postwar boom. Social forces pushed these women to marry and have children much younger than did the college-educated women that came before them. This meant that family came first for this generation.
This was the generation of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. Goldin argues that Friedan’s description of the onslaught of marketing aimed at making women bored, fastidious housewives was correct. However, Friedan’s argument that this generation of women had retreated, eroding the progress of the previous generation by eschewing jobs for family, was fundamentally incorrect.
Goldin’s meticulous data collection over the course of the lives of this generation shows that they ultimately accomplished more than the generation that came before them, but in a different order. Family was first, and then they went to work.
The rhythms of work and family have shifted for each generation of women as they seek to pursue work, establish independence, build relationships, and raise families. Goldin shows how important it is to look at the long arc of each generation’s life to see the progress that they ultimately make and the lessons that they learn and pass on to the next generation.
These lessons intertwine with forces like the invention and legalization of reproductive technology, which changed the calculus for women entering work in the 1970s. Control over fertility came at a crucial time in the labor market as the ongoing shift in demand from brawn to brains drove demand for college-educated workers.
Gruppe 4
Goldin shows how college-educated women in group 4 wanted careers, not just jobs, and they pursued them first: “No previous group of college-graduate women had entered career-oriented professions and fields on as grand a scale” (p. 113).
This group put off marriage and starting a family. Their age of first marriage shot up and so did the divorce rate. Women’s identities were shifting from the home to the world of work. But there was a cost: one-third of the women of this group with graduate or professional degrees would never have child.
Gruppe 5
Group 5 are the women born after 1958, who saw the risks of putting off starting a family and worked to simultaneously combine work and family. This is the “have it all” generation. These women delayed marriage and childbearing, improving their career success rate. But they ultimately did marry and have children, running headfirst into the time bind: “Children require time; careers require time” (p. 150).
Warum der Gender Pay Gap sticky ist
Goldin lays out the problem in meticulous detail. It boils down to the fact that incentives in the labor market make it hard for couples to truly split the work of the household and children.
Today women get more advanced degrees than men. Women hold half of all jobs. But we do not have gender equity. Women tend to work in jobs that pay less than those held by men, and they still do more of the activities of daily life, like laundry, cooking, cleaning, and childcare.
Why? In Career and Family, Goldin identifies the modern problem that has no name: greedy jobs. Greedy jobs want attention on their terms, they don’t like compromising or facing trade-offs, and they throw impossible tantrums if you, their caretaker, can’t drop everything for them. Wait, that’s toddlers. Goldin points out that it’s also, for many careers, employers. As any parent of twins knows, having two toddlers with wildly different needs can be an impossible to juggle. So, women who face a human toddler and a career toddler often struggle. The end result is that the woman abandons the greedy job and seeks alternative, more flexible work. And yet, because of the high pay associated with greedy jobs, men often hold onto them and find themselves a less than equal partner at home.
Goldin argues that solving the asymmetries in the labor market that lead someone working 60 hours a week to earn more than double that of someone working 30 hours is crucial to the ongoing evolution of women in the labor market. She puts it bluntly: we must “reduce the cost of flexibility” (p. 218) if we want both parents to share equally in the demands of children, so that they can invest equally in the demands of their careers. Ultimately, in Career and Family, we see how women’s careers have “fundamentally changed the relationship between the American family and the economy” (p. 5); it is also clear that the evolution of career and family is not yet done.
Was heißt das?
Unternehmen zahlen gut dafür, dass wir ständig verfügbar und flexibel sind. Oh, noch schnell ein Projekt fertig machen? Kein Problem, ich muss mich ja nicht um Kinder oder eine kranke Mutter kümmern, das macht ja meine Frau …
Wird Sorgearbeit gerecht aufgeteilt – die halbe Miete – sollte das aber kein Problem mehr sein. Denn dann kann der Mann diesen flexiblen Job eben auch nicht mehr annehmen, er muss sich ja auch um das Kind kümmern.
Das große Problem – die zweite Hälfte der Miete – ist jetzt aber, dass ein Paar in der Regel gemeinsam weniger verdient, wenn beide 30 Stunden arbeiten als wenn eine Person 60 Stunden arbeitet (oder eine 10 und der andere 50).
Es gibt also immer einen ökonomischen Anreiz, dass eine Person eher für die Sorgearbeit und die andere für das Geld zuständig ist. Wie lässt sich das ändern?
Dazu hat Claudia Goldin einmal eine hoch interessante Studie verfasst. Es geht um Jobs in Apotheken, wo es anders als früher kaum mehr einen Lohnunterschied zwischen Männern und Frauen gibt. Warum?
Weil Apotheker:innen aus verschiedensten Gründen austauschbarer geworden sind. Es ist also viel weniger ein Problem, wenn am Vormittag und am Nachmittag zwei verschiedene Personen denselben Job machen – oder eben eine Person am Montag und Dienstag und eine andere von Mittwoch bis Freitag.
Bei vielen Jobs, die gut bezahlt sind, ist das nicht so: Anwälte, Beraterinnen, CEOs, Abteilungsleiter:innen. Hier zahlt es sich für Firmen viel mehr aus, einer Person 8.000 Euro für 60 Stunden zu zahlen statt zwei Personen 4.000 Euro für jeweils 30 Stunden.
Hier der Abstract:
Pharmacy today is a highly remunerated female-majority profession with a small gender earnings gap and low earnings dispersion. Using extensive surveys of pharmacists, as well as the US Census, American Community Surveys, and Current Population Surveys, we explore the gender earnings gap, penalty to part-time work, demographics of pharmacists relative to other college graduates, and evolution of the profession during the last half-century. Technological changes increasing substitutability among pharmacists, growth of pharmacy employment in retail chains and hospitals, and related decline of independent pharmacies reduced the penalty to part-time work and contribute to the narrow gender earnings gap in pharmacy.