In essays on the role of women in the economy, leading scholars discuss the size of the female labor supply, the career commitment and participation of married women, sex discrimination, and male-female wage differences

This collection of original essays brings econometric theory to bear on the problem of estimating the labor force participation of women. Five scholars here examine, both theoretically and empirically, the determinants of women's wages in the market, the value of their home time, and the factors that affect their employment. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

These comparative studies by internationally-known scholars in the United States, Hungary, Germany, and the Netherlands provide a cross-national examination of substantially differing circumstances--in hours, earnings, job level, childcare availability, parental leave, and the like--of women's employment. The book's dual focus on micro and macro approaches clarifies the extent to which these variances can be ascribed to differences in the institutional context of employment or to the individual characteristics of female employees. It thereby provides a valuable contribution both to gender studies and to studies on the sociology of work. Women's employment changed dramatically during the second half of the twentieth century. Countries in the northern hemisphere have faced similar trends in labor and employment, yet there are still many contrasts between them when it comes to women's work. In this volume, women's employment is studied in different institutional, structural, and social settings, with the intention of exploring the causes of the differences and similarities in women's employment in different countries and at different times. Three perspectives are used: the macro approach, which provides a thorough and focused understanding of the influence of the institutional context on women's work; the micro approach, which gives insight into the employment behavior of individual women who live in the same social or institutional context; and the macro-micro approach, which makes clear the relative importance to women's work of both individual characteristics and institutional context. While a good deal of information is available on women's employment, a cross-national comparison over time has been lacking. This book fills that all-important niche. Women's Employment in a Comparative Perspective thus has a special relevance for economists as well as sociologists and social work specialists. Tanja Van der Lippe is assistant professor of sociology at the Research School ICS of Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Liset Van Dijk is senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research, Nivel.