Computer Chips and Paper Clips Technology and Women's Employment, Volume II: Case Studies and Policy Perspectives (1987) / Chapter Skim
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III. Technology and Trends in Women
III. Technology and Trends in Women
Women
Pages 183-222
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From page 183... ...
Part III technology and Mends in amens E~l~me~
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From page 185... ...
Female workers, however, have characteristics that distinguish them from their male counterparts and that cause them to be differentially affected by technological change. Among the distinctive characteristics of the female labor force are the lower participation rates of women as compared with those of men.
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From page 186... ...
Over the long run, technological advances, proxied by a measure called total factor productivity, have been positively associated with the female intensity of a sector; that is, female-intensive sectors have had greater advances in technology. But sectors having the greatest advances in technology did not necessarily experience the largest expansion in employment.
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From page 187... ...
Black women, who have always been disproportionately employed in agriculture and domestic service, experienced decreases in employment with sectoral shifts that occurred early in this century, but these declines did not necessarily entail decreased well-being. In the most recent period, black women's employment, along with employment of white women, has been greatly affected by educational advances.
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From page 188... ...
Denoting the output as Q and the inputs as K ~ One can add another source, the increase in the female labor force participation rate, by scaling each source. One can scale, for example, the female intensity of each sector by expressing it as an index in relationship to the female intensity of the economy as a whole.
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From page 189... ...
The theoretical framework economists use to study technological change can be condensed by considering a particular production function known as Cobb-Douglas. This production function is a geometrically weighted average of the inputs multiplied by a constant term, T: Q= TK"L(~-~.
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From page 190... ...
rather than in efficiency units. Thus part of total factor productivity will be attributable to the increased efficiency of the factors (for example, from increased education, skills, or health)
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From page 191... ...
To explore issues of biased technological change requires a more flexible functional form than Cobb-Douglas, and some estimates of factor bias using the transiog production function are discussed below. TRENDS IN FEMALE EMPLOYMENT: 1800 TO 1980 It is instructive to review the historical record regarding the labor market involvement of women in the United States before examining the impact of technological change.
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From page 192... ...
The geographical location of black women, their greater participation rate early on, and their occupational structure make the analysis of the effects of technological change on their employment different from that for white women. In 1910, for example, fully 95 percent of all employed black women were in just two occupational groupings agriculture and domestic and personal service; the comparable figures for white women were 43 percent for native born and 27 percent for native born of foreign parentage.
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From page 194... ...
As part of a larger study of women's changing economic roles, have prepared a matrix of cross-section and time-series labor force participation rates by marital status, age, race, and national origin from 1890 to the present. Figure 1 is part of this larger matrix and summarizes the expansion of the labor force participation of white (native-born)
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From page 195... ...
Similarly, cohorts born after 1945 had substantially increased participation rates. All other cohorts, to be sure, contributed to the expansion of the female labor force participation rate, but the cohorts mentioned appear to have gone far beyond the trend line.
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From page 196... ...
But beginning with the cohort born around 1910, black married women have also had large increases in participation rates. Unlike the data for this cohort of white women, however, those for black women increase only for ages over 40.
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From page 197... ...
Given that some young women were employed in alternative pursuits such as domestic service and teaching, the crude manufacturing labor force participation rates indicate that a high proportion of single women in New England had been drawn into the market economy by the 1830s. Comparable evidence on female labor force participation before 1832 is not available, but the levels implied by the 1830s data were most likely achieved quite rapidly, because opportunities for the employment of females were limited prior to industrial development.
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From page 198... ...
[57.7] aChildren were allocated between boys and girls as given by the 1880 population figures for children in manufacturing employment by states.
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From page 199... ...
Large shifts in the composition of the labor force have occurred in the communications, professional, and clerical sectors. How has the index of female intensity for the economy's sectors and industries been affected by changes in total factor productivity, the measure of technological change used in this analysis?
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From page 200... ...
200 s" o x 1_ 0 ~5 ~ JO 1 o c°~ so .,Q all ·e ~ 0 TIC o ~ to `: A so Pa ~ ~ on o t~ ~ o a, Eel ·m ~ ~ O ma O
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201 _ '_ _ Hi ~ co ~ Cal co Ed *
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202 ._ o CO m o h To 4: l o qJ :>, o oo COD O U
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From page 203... ...
0.805 (10.86) Total Factor Productivity (TFP)
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Several qualifications to this analysis must be noted. The relationship between the index and total factor productivity has not been explicitly modeled, and the analysis should be viewed as one that is exploratory rather than one of hypothesis testing.6 Total 5 The index would have a mean of I.0 if all sectors were included, because the index is merely the female intensity of a sector at time t divided by the female intensity of the economy's labor force at time t.
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From page 205... ...
Thus, as the average educational attainment of the population has increased, women have become a higher proportion of the labor force in certain sectors, such as those employing clerical workers. More highly educated workers will increase the measure of total factor productivity, because only the number of laborers or the hours of labor input, and not the quality-adjusted labor input, is used.
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From page 206... ...
Why might there be a positive correlation between the index of female intensity and the change in total factor productivity? It is possible that the most innovative sectors require flexible labor forces, and that the female labor force, being less unionized and less experienced, has been more amenable and receptive to change in work organization.
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From page 207... ...
Agriculture experienced relatively small increases in total factor productivity until the mid-twentieth century when its technological advance was among the greatest in the economy. It has also been a sector of rapidly reduced employment.
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From page 208... ...
Of this 1.50, almost one-half, or 0.67 percentage points, was due to the augmentation of labor in the form of increased education. In the American case, educational advances for males and females have paralleled each other, but the impact on the occupational structure and labor force participation of women has probably been greater.
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From page 209... ...
It is not at all coincidental that the cohorts experiencing the greatest increases in participation rates over their lifetimes were those with the greatest increase in education when young. The cohort born from 1900 to 1910 achieved an educational transformation in high school completion rates; it was precisely this cohort that experienced substantial increases in its labor force participation both during its early years and even more so during the 1950s when it was 40 to 50 years old.
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From page 210... ...
Thus, differential rates of educational attainment might explain some of the differences pointed out earlier in labor force participation rates between black and white married women. How did educational change in the first three decades of this century affect the job opportunities of young women, and how did it later affect their labor force participation when married?
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From page 211... ...
Thus, increased educational standards for all Americans during the first few deca(les of this century expanded the employment of women at that time and later, as cohorts with increased education aged. Furthermore, the increase in educational attainment with the cohorts born after 1940 to 1945 is easily correlated with substantially higher labor force participation in the most recent decades.
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From page 212... ...
explores the role of monitoring and supervisory costs in the adoption of different methods of work organization for male and female manufacturing employees. Firm-leve} data on supervisory costs and the numbers of male and female workers in piece and time rate positions suggest that differences in the costs of supervision influenced the form of work organization.
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From page 213... ...
(See RotelIa, 1981, for an analysis of clerical employment that stresses human capital aspects of the mechanization and feminization of the office.) RELATIVE EARNINGS OF FEMALES TO MALES, 1 8 1 5 TO 1 98 2 The degree to which technological change is biased within sectors or industries and the degree to which even neutral technological change occurs in particular sectors or industries alters the relative earnings of inputs, such as capital and labor or mate and female labor.
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The increase in the labor force participation rate of women was substantial enough that new labor force entrants pulled down the average labor market experience accumulated by those already employed. Because wages are computed
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What accounted for the decrease in the gender gap over the past century? Various studies have shown that earnings within occupational groupings have increased for females relative to those
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From page 216... ...
216 A HISTORICAL PERSPECTI VE TABLE 6 Wage Ratios for Males and Females in Manufacturing Employment, 1815 to 1970, and Across All Occupations, 1890 to 1982 Agriculture 1815 Manufaacturing 18201832a 1850a 1885 1890 0.29 0.37-0.30 0.44-0.43 0.46-0.50 0.559 0.539 1899 1904 1909 1914 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 Full Time 0.535 0.536 0.536 0.535 0.536 0.535 0.536 Full Time Actual Weekly Hourly 0.536 0.535 0.537 0.534 0.536 0.536 0.536 0.568 0.592 0.559 0.645 0.617 0.653 0.612 0.677 0.607 0.672 0.593 0.664 0.592 0.657 0.585 0.662 0.597 0.652 0.573 0.645 0.575 0.637 0.578 0.635 0.612 0.621 0.653 0.618 0.661 0.656 0.688 0.704 0.653 0.700 Manufacturing All Occupations Constructed (median earnings) from Six Sectors Full Time Total Adjusted Actual for Hours 1890 0.463 1930 0.556 1939 0.539 0.513 0.581 1950 0.537 1951 0.532 1952 0.558 1953 0.512 1954 0.497 1955 0.580 0.526 0.639 0.689 1956 0.583 0.515 0.639 0.690 1957 0.554 0.496 0.633 0.680 1958 0.570 0.477 0.630 0.677 1959 0.580 0.613 0.664
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From page 217... ...
Full Time Total 0.559 0.534 0.557 0.544 0.547 0.532 0.524 0.563 0.549 0.544 0.540 Adjusted Actual for Hours 0.608 0.663 0.594 0.647 0.595 0.652 0.596 0.654 0.596 0.659 0.600 0.666 0.580 0.646 0.578 0.639 0.582 0.644 0.605 0.669 0.594 0.655 0.595 0.653 0.579 0.636 0.566 0.627 0.572 0.627 0.588 0.633 0.602 0.666 0.589 0.648 0.600 0.658 0.596 0.656 0.602 0.646 0.592 0.646 0.617 0.672 0.603 NOTE: Except where noted these ratios are based on mean earnings of full-time year-round employees. aThe range is for New England and the Middle Atlantic.
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This finding is particularly noteworthy, since it is generally presumed that the occupational distribution is the primary determinant of the gap between male and female earnings. The degree to which the occupational distribution matters in determining the aggregate ratio of female to mate earnings involves constructing two hypothetical cases.
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From page 219... ...
Employment effects of technical change combined with differing demand, income elasticities expanded certain sectors and contracted others, and the increase in education raised the relative earnings of females within occupational groups. The large increase in female labor force participation over the last 30 years has meant that recent labor market entrants have had substantially less job training than have previous participants.
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From page 220... ...
Changes in technology seem to be the most likely reason for the initial advance, ant} changes in the experience and education of the working population of women appear to have been responsible for much of the recent rise. The secular increase in female employment in America has owed much to the relative growth of particular sectors in the economy, such as those employing clerical and professional workers, and to the decline of others, such as agriculture.
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From page 221... ...
:707-733. 1977 Female labor force participation: the origin of black and white differences, 1870 to 1880.
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From page 222... ...
1980 Female Labor Supply: Theory and Estimation Princeton: Princeton University Press. Smith, James 1984 Race and human capital.
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