Effects of Women in the Workplace

Effects of Women in the Workplace

During the times of World War II the massive exodus of young married- and marriage-age men to distant war shores placed them one continent away from their families. And throughout the war years, the family back home didn't remain static. In the second shift of the war effort, mothers were now taken out of the home and moved to the workplace. The absence of men who were away at war left a massive vacuum in the industrial force, which was now gearing up for war production. And within a relatively short span, women and mothers who had been briefly "emancipated" to the work place, as a patriotic duty, were also requested to return to their homemaker duties at war's end as a matter of demonstrating further patriotism.

But the men who returned from war were altered to various degrees by the carnage of a global war. While they eagerly returned to family and work, something had changed in America. These men became less involved with the family, and more involved with making up for lost time in securing a financial future for themselves and their families. And while mothers and girlfriends returned to more domestic roles, to various degrees they too had seen a part of life that left them with new questions, new perspectives, and sometimes, new resentments about their previously accepted gender roles. This questioning and resentment was most likely the predecessor of the "woman's movement of the 60s.

Some believe that the impact of WWII has been overlooked. Its introduction of women into a previously male-dominated work culture; the subsequent psychic antagonism between the returning soldier and returning homemaker, resulted in a weakening of the marriage bond that has had a tremendous impact on their offspring as well. Further evidence of the impact of this major societal revolution on the family, marriage, and fatherhood comes from the records of divorce rates in America in the 130-year span between 1870 and 1998. In 1870, the divorce rate was 3 percent, virtually non-existent. As the Industrial Revolution took hold, by 1930 the divorce rate had steadily escalated to a peak of 17 percent - a nearly 600 percent increase. At the end of the World War II, the divorce rate spiked to 30 percent and then leveled off to an average of 25 percent between 1950 and 1965. It was at this point - between 1965 and 1975 that the divorce rate doubled, and has remained fairly constant at about 50 percent up until the end of the twentieth century.

By 1970, 43.3 percent of American women were active members of the labor force, working either part or full-time and family households accounted for 81percent of all households. By 1999, 60 percent of women were working and the percentage of family households had decreased to 69 percent of all households. This rise in women's labor force participation has played a role in altering the structure of the American family. Women and children living in female-headed households are more likely to live in poverty than are women and children in other household situations. In general, children living with one parent, mother or father, are four times as likely to live below the poverty line as those in two-parent families, 44 percent compared to 11 percent.

Repeated studies by developmental psychologists (Gold & Andres, 1978; Easterbrooks & Goldberg, 1985; Hoffman, 1985) found no consistent evidence that maternal employment was harmful to children. This doesn't mean that working mothers have no problems with their children, but that the problems are not much different. As compared to the children of full-time homemakers, children