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World War II and Female Labor Force Participation Rates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Mary M. Schweitzer
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Abstract

Between the years 1940 and 1947 the demand for female labor in the United States shifted rapidly. Wages for women rose swiftly during the war, then fell suddenly when industries converted to peacetime production. This paper makes use of household production theory to explore the behavior of different segments of the female labor force as they responded to the radical changes in demand brought by World War II. The analysis suggests that a crucial turning point in the efforts to hire women was reached in the second half of 1943.

Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , March 1980 , pp. 89 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1980

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References

1 Space limitations prevent a thorough discussion of the literature on the household production function. The pathbreaking article was Mincer, Jacob, “Labor Force Participation of Married Women: A Study of Labor Supply,” in Lewis, Harold G., ed., Aspects of Labor Economics (Princeton, 1962)Google Scholar. For recent work on the subject in economic history, see Fraundorf, Martha Norby, “The Labor Force Participation of Turn-of-the-Century Married Women,” this Journal, 39 (June 1979), 401–518Google Scholar, and Goldin, Claudia, “Household and Market Production of Families in a Late Nineteenth Century American City,” Explorations in Economic History, 16 (Apr. 1979), 111–31Google Scholar.

2 United States Department of Labor, Women's Bureau Bulletin (hereafter WBB) No. 172 (Washington, D.C., 1939), pp. 7–8Google Scholar, and WBB No. 253 (Washington, D.C., 1954), p. 82Google Scholar.

3 Chafe, William H., The American Woman (New York, 1972), pp. 60–61Google Scholar; “Women in Industry: Comparative Earnings and Hours of Women and Men, March 1940,” Monthly Labor Review, 51 (Sept. 1940), 641Google Scholar.

4 United States Department of Labor, WBB No. 225 (Washington, D.C., 1948), pp. 1–3Google Scholar; “The Labor Force in the First Year of Peace,” Monthly Labor Review, 63 (Nov. 1946), 670Google Scholar.

5 United States Department of Labor, WBB No. 209 (Washington, D.C., 1946), p. 44Google ScholarPubMed; WBB No. 225, p. 5.

6 WBB No. 225, p. 1; WBB No. 253, p. 2.

7 Schweitzer, Mary, “Women in the Labor Force, 1940–1947” (Master's thesis, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1977), pp. 124–27Google Scholar; WBB No. 225, p. 1.

8 Schweitzer, “Labor Force,” pp. 117–28; WBB No. 225, p. 3.

9 WBB No. 225, p. 11; Schweitzer, “Labor Force,” pp. 75–76.

10 WBB No. 209, p. 45.

11 Ibid., p. 46.

12 Schweitzer, “Labor Force,” pp. 79–82.

13 WBB No. 208, pp. 4–6, 8; McKenzie, Catherine, “Working Mothers,” New York Times, 5 March 1944Google Scholar, sec. 6, p. 29.

14 WBB No. 209, pp. 21–22, 56; Chafe, American Woman, p. 165; Schweitzer, “Labor Force,” pp. 85–88.

15 Chafe, American Woman, pp. 161–73.

16 Schweitzer, “Labor Force,” pp. 88–91.

17 Ibid., pp. 32, 82–84.

18 WBB No. 225, pp. 1, 3.