Doctoral Dissertation Research: Ideology or Workplace Policies: A Cross-Cohort Analysis of How Women Make Decisions About Work and Family

也许20世纪下半叶最重要的社会趋势是妇女，特别是母亲迅速进入劳动力市场。随后，儿童保育安排的模式在这段时间内发生了巨大变化。现有的研究表明，性别意识形态、教育和职业抱负以及获得有利于家庭的工作场所政策等许多因素都会影响女性对工作和家庭的选择。然而，不太清楚这些模式是如何随着时间的推移而变化的。通过统计分析，本研究考察了意识形态因素和工作场所政策的可获得性对全国纵向调查两个队列的母亲参与劳动力和选择育儿安排的影响。该项目将回答以下研究问题：1)女性在平衡围绕新生儿出生的工作和家庭需求的方式上是否存在队列差异？2)意识形态因素和工作场所政策的可用性如何影响母亲的劳动力参与？3)各种工作和家庭行为与过去和未来的选择如何联系？4)对于不同世代的女性来说，这些过程是否以相同的方式进行？这项研究对性别和工作领域产生了一些更广泛的影响。尽管社会科学家已经记录了女性在劳动力中的相对劣势，但对于这些模式是如何随着时间的推移而变化的，以及是什么过程导致了这种变化，人们的探索有限。这项研究通过记录工作和家庭行为的队列差异，并确定意识形态和机会随着时间的推移对趋势的相对影响，来解决这些缺失。解决劳动力参与方面的性别差异的大量工作侧重于个人和家庭决定如何限制妇女在劳动力市场的机会。对于劳动力市场结构对女性就业行为的影响，研究者们的关注要少得多。这项研究通过解决工作场所政策对妇女选择的影响，在平衡对个人和结构决定因素的关注方面迈出了重要的一步。这项研究的更广泛的影响在于它对关于妇女参与劳动力市场的学术研究和关于缩小劳动力市场行为中的性别差距的家庭友好政策的有效性的政策讨论做出了贡献。

Perhaps the most significant social trend of the second half of the twentieth century has been the rapid involvement of women, especially mothers, in the labor market. Subsequently, patterns of childcare arrangements have changed dramatically during this time period. Extant research has established that many factors such as gender ideology, educational and career aspirations, and access to family friendly workplace policies affect the choices women make about work and family. However, it is less clear how these patterns have changed over time. Through statistical analysis this research examines the impact of ideological factors and the availability of workplace policies on mother's labor force participation and choice of childcare arrangements for two cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey. This project will answer the following research questions: 1) Are there cohort differences in the ways that women balance work and family demands surrounding the birth of new baby? 2) How do ideological factors and availability of workplace policies impact mothers' labor force participation? 3) How are various work and family behaviors linked to past and future choices? And 4) Do these processes operate in the same way for different generations of women? This research makes a number of broader impacts to the fields of gender and work. Although social scientists have documented women's relative disadvantage in the labor force there has been limited exploration of how these patterns are changing over time and what processes result in this change. This research addresses these absences by documenting cohort differences in work and family behaviors and by determining the relative influence of ideology and opportunity on trends over time. A great deal of work addressing gender differences in labor force participation focuses on how individual and family decisions constrain women's labor market opportunities. Researchers pay far less attention to the influence of labor market structures on women's employment behaviors. This research provides an important step in balancing attention to both individual and structural determinants by addressing the impact of workplace policies on women's choices. The broader impacts of this research lie in its contributions both to academic research on women's labor market participation and to policy discussions on the efficacy of family friendly policies for narrowing the gender gap in labor market behaviors.