Her real sphere? Married women's labor force participation in the United States, 1860--1940

Married women's participation in paid work in the United States increased substantially during the twentieth century. This change captured the attention of academic researchers, policy makers and the media. Changing family decisions about labor supply have implications for, and roots in, the family and the workplace. The centrality of family and work to people's lives means married women's changing behavior has affected their families and colleagues too. While modern changes in wives' labor force participation are well understood, their decisions about work before 1940 have received less attention. I use census microdata from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) to reevaluate married women's labor force participation decisions between 1860 and 1940.; The first chapter provides an overview of married women's labor force participation from the eighteenth century to the present, setting the 1860-1940 period in context. Variation in census enumeration makes it difficult to obtain consistent estimates of labor force participation rates. It is likely that labor force participation rates declined slowly after 1850, reaching a nadir between 1900 and 1920, and then rising to approximately their original level by 1940.; While labor force participation rates did not change substantially, the form of married women's market work did change. Chapters 2 through 5 analyze the influence of government, business and demographic factors on how families made decisions about married women's work. Reforms to married women's property laws had little immediate effect on participation, but increased investment in girls' education. The cohorts affected by these changes increased their market work in later life, in the 1920s and 1930s. The influence of husbands' economic circumstances on married women's participation decisions declined steadily during the same period. Married women became more likely to be employed in wage-work distinct from their husband's employment. The combination of independent decisions and separate employment contributed to a more equal economic relationship between spouses. While there was opposition to married women's increased labor force participation, I use interviews with ordinary workers to show that previous analyses have overstated the intensity of opposition which is best characterized as broad and shallow.