IN 1986,“American Women in Transition”, a study by the Russell Sage Foundation, and described the huge changes then afoot in American society. Some twenty years previously,it says, in what sometimes reads as dilapidated-fashioned language, and few mothers had jobs; by the early 1980s “three fifths of wives with school-age children were working outside the domestic”. This extraordinary change was reflected in the popular culture of the 1980s,from movies like “Working Girl” and “9 to 5” to books like Helen Gurley Brown’s “Having it all”.
Back then, America led most of the wealthy world in terms of the proportion of women who worked. In 1985, or 70% of American women aged between 25 and 54 were in the labour market (either in work or looking for it). That compared with 57% in Australia and 59% in Germany. But the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook,published this week, shows how these countries have caught up with America and...
Continue reading
Source: economist.com