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Using the United States' fiscal response to COVID-19 in March and April 2020 as a case study, this paper explores the implications the US coronavirus legislation had for the societal distribution of responsibility for social reproduction among US households, employers, and the federal government – and the legislation's effect on women and racialized minorities. It builds on feminist political economy research that argues that, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, economic crisis and stagnating conditions for workers in the US had increased the role of households and the US government in social reproduction relative to the contribution of employers. The paper argues that the US federal government has responded to the COVID-19 crisis through an infusion of income support, but it has failed to increase its long-term socially reproductive commitments and has not addressed the intensified socially reproductive burden placed on households or the declining role of employers in working-class social reproduction. HIGHLIGHTS The COVID-19 crisis prompted the US Congress to spend an historic US$3 trillion on relief. Sixty-nine percent of coronavirus spending was allocated to social reproduction purposes. Congress responded more to the collapse of aggregate demand than to the health crisis. Federal aid improved the livelihood of some groups, while disadvantaging others. The bills left low-wage workers, women, and minorities in vulnerable positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have explored the ways that conventional economic theory does not fully explain the distribution and characteristics of caring labor – the work, unpaid and paid, of caring for those who are young, elderly, or disabled. This paper explores a critical dimension of paid care – high turnover rates in the lowest-wage segment of the sector (including childcare, nursing homes, home health). Using longitudinal data from the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) in the US, it examines the "flip side" of that turnover by comparing occupational mobility among low-wage care workers to that of other low-wage service workers. The findings indicate that patterns of occupational transition among care workers are distinct in important ways. Understanding occupational attachment among paid care workers is critical to developing theoretical models about care and to creating care-specific policies to address employee turnover and its negative impact on care quality. HIGHLIGHTS High turnover in low-wage jobs in care-related fields has a negative impact on the quality of care. Low-wage care workers have longer job tenures and are more likely to stay in their field than other low-wage workers. Low-wage care workers experience more upward mobility than food service and cleaning workers, but less than office and sales workers. Low-wage care workers have high rates of transition to a period of not working. There is evidence of higher levels of occupational attachment among low-wage care workers than among other low-wage service workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that a high proportion of workers in "essential" sectors of the US economy are Black women, this paper seeks to answer the following: in which occupations did Black women in the US experience the greatest job losses during the early phase of the pandemic? Drawing on feminist economic and stratification economic theories, this quantitative analysis suggests that the greatest losses were cashier jobs in the hotel and restaurant industry, and childcare worker positions in the healthcare and social services industry. These two occupations are low wage, dominated by women, and considered essential. This study posits that Black women disproportionately lost these jobs for three reasons: (1) Black women's strong attachment to the US workforce; (2) Black women's overrepresentation in the hotel/restaurant and healthcare/social services industries; and (3) women's overrepresentation in low-wage occupations. The study offers policy solutions that could help sustain the Black community during the pandemic-inspired economic downturn. HIGHLIGHTS Black women face occupational segregation that is specific to both their gender and their race. Black women's employment is more narrowly concentrated by industry than any other demographic group. Job losses due to COVID-19 especially hit industries in which Black women are concentrated. Black women lost the most jobs in the cashier occupation. Any pandemic-recovery policy agenda must include full employment for Black women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new category of workers officially labeled "essential" in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States includes a large percentage of women working in care services. In many of these services, health risks are often considered part of the job and are uncompensated by hazard pay. Building on previous feminist research explaining the devaluation of care work, this paper uses the most recent available data from the US Current Population Survey to show that workers in essential care service jobs – especially women – earn less than other essential workers. This pattern cannot be explained by differences in unionization rates and points to other differences in bargaining power, including institutional factors influencing the earnings of doctors and nurses. Care penalties have significant implications for the future supply of care services as the pandemic persists, highlighting the need to develop broad coalitions to challenge the undervaluation of care work. HIGHLIGHTS Care workers are half of all essential workers in the US and mostly women. Essential care workers pay a wage penalty. Features of care work contribute to disempowerment by encouraging commitment over bargaining. Pay penalties contribute to burnout, high turnover, and reduced entry into essential care jobs. Industry-level unionization coalitions should form to contest devaluation of care provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using time-diary data from the Time Use in Economic and Social Accounts (TUESA) 1975–76, which covers heterosexual couples in the United States, this paper analyzes the relationship between a state’s adoption of unilateral divorce and couples’ time allocation. Married women in states with unilateral divorce spend less time on core housework than those in states without unilateral divorce, and married men contribute to a greater share of housework. This paper also uses cross-state and time variation in divorce law adoption by including additional data from the early 1990s to estimate the effect of a state’s adoption of unilateral divorce on daily time use. The analysis confirms the findings for women in the 1970s: the availability of unilateral divorce substantially decreases married women’s time spent on housework. The results suggest that the adoption of unilateral divorce law shifts the relative bargaining power within heterosexual married households to women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the educational self-selection of immigrants to the United States across forty-two countries of origin and analyzes determinants of selectivity, including home-country gender status (as measured by the United Nations' Gender Empowerment Measure [GEM]). Measuring educational selfselection, the study uses data from the 2006 American Community Survey and the 2000 and 2014 Barro-Lee Educational Attainment Measure to construct the Net Difference Index between immigrants and nonmigrants. It compares the educational attainment difference between immigrants and nonmigrants who remain in the home country and demonstrates that immigrants to the US are more educated than their home-country counterparts across all immigrant groups (positive selection). Regression results further indicate that higher gender inequality in the home country influences more highly educated women to migrate. The paper also confirms that higher migration costs and lower income inequality in the home country influence more highly educated individuals to migrate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Invites submission papers for the special issue on globalization in the Feminist Economics 2000 publication in the United Stats. Deadline for submission of papers; Names of guest editors for the special issue; Presentation of possible topics.

In the United States, a recent spate of popular media attention has focused on whether mothers, especially highly educated mothers in their thirties, are increasingly "opting out" of employment. This paper uses data from the Current Population Survey's Annual Social and Economic Survey (ASEC) to examine whether children cause women to exit employment. This paper finds that the "child effect" on women's employment has fallen since the end of the 1970s. The child effect was -21.8 percentage points in 1979 and has fallen consistently over the last two decades to -12.7 percentage points in 2005. Between 2000 and 2005, the child effect grew from -11.1 to -12.7, but the change was statistically insignificant. Recent declines in women's employment may be more an effect of the weak labor market for all women, mothers and non-mothers, rather than an increase in mothers voluntarily choosing to exit employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that earlier quantitative research on the relationship between heterosexual partners' earnings and time spent on housework has two basic flaws: First, it has focused on the effects of women's shares of couples' total earnings on housework, not considering the simpler possibility of an association between women's absolute earnings and housework. Second, it tends to draw uniform inferences across the range of data, including regions where the data are sparse. This paper adopts a flexible, nonparametric approach to examine this relationship within a US context, while not imposing the polynomial specifications on data that characterize the two dominant models. The results provide support for an alternative model that emphasizes the importance of partners' own earnings for their housework, especially in the case of women. Women's earnings are negatively associated with their housework hours, independent of their partners' earnings and their shares of couples' total earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reform of the United States welfare system in 1996 drastically changed welfare receipt for low-income lone mothers. This paper explores the effects of these changes on lone mothers by summarizing empirical work on caseload reduction, labor force participation, income, poverty, material hardship, and family formation. While it appears that the economic status of many lone mothers improved during the economic expansion in the late 1990s, many lone mothers continued to experience poverty and material hardship. Building on the work of feminist scholars from both the US and other countries, this paper goes on to critique mainstream research on welfare reform. It identifies a particularly feminist approach to welfare reform research, stresses its advantages over mainstream research, and speculates about why there is comparatively less feminist research to date. The paper concludes by calling for more structural analyses of poverty and of lone motherhood itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores one angle of the race/gender/class intersection by examining the effect of residential segregation on black women and men's employment status in the US. Do the exclusionary mechanisms embedded in racially-based residential segregation affect black women and men's economic outcomes similarly, or are their employment outcomes differentiated by their different gender statuses? This paper lays out a theoretical framework for understanding the role residential segregation may play in shaping black men and women's labor market outcomes, outlining key mechanisms that link residential segregation to labor market inequality, highlighting the ways in which many of these mechanisms are gendered as well as racialized. This paper also offers an analytic design to test the hypotheses developed in this exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between the advent of the birth control pill and divorce rates. Women using the pill can decide when and whether to have children and whether to maintain their attachment to the labor force. This ability may increase women's autonomy, making divorce more feasible. The pill's effects are identified through a quasi-experiment exploiting differences in the language of the Comstock anti-obscenity statutes approved in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the United States. Empirical evidence from state-level data on US divorce rates 1950 to 1985 shows that sales bans of oral contraceptives have a negative impact on divorce. These findings are robust to alternative specifications and controls for observed (such as women's labor force participation) and unobserved state-specific factors, and time-varying factors at the state level. Results suggest that the impact of women's control of hormonal contraception on their autonomy is important in divorce decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines arguments by activists and economists surrounding attempts to establish minimum wages for women in the United States in the Progressive Era. In particular, the paper focuses on analyses based on Beatrice and SidneyWebbs' argument that industries paying less than a living wage were "parasitic" on the society, a net drain on macro-efficiency. This analysis, widely accepted among economists of the time, viewed women as particularly vulnerable workers facing labor markets that were institutionally constructed and predatory. Unequal gender roles, employer power, and the absence of collective bargaining could all result in wages that were socially unacceptable as well as economically nonoptimal. These debates offer insights for modern feminist wage theories, and for current living wage campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human capital theorists claim that the gender wage gap is due in large part to supply-side factors. They base this claim on empirical evidence. This paper challenges the interpretation of that empirical evidence. It argues that that interpretation is based on an assumption of a simplified production system that rules out any consideration of institutionally-based demand-side discrimination. It argues that insiders have an incentive to choose production techniques that benefit themselves, and that their choices will bias measures of human capital in their favor. The paper then considers a specific case study - the undergraduate U.S. academic market - where such institutionally-based demand-side discrimination exists, and offers an institutional change which could work to offset it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a comparative study of the United States and Korea regarding the effects of unions on gender earnings gaps in 2004. Using datasets representative of the population of the US and Korea, this contribution shows that gender differences in the workers' observed characteristics and the unobserved component reduce gender earnings gaps in union jobs in both the US and Korea. Fringe benefits in the union sector attract women workers with higher labor market qualifications into the union sector and thereby reduce the gender earnings gap in this sector. The study finds that this self-selection process in the union sector is stronger in Korea than in the US, but the seniority-based wage system that prevails in the Korean union sector widens the gender earnings gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, several researchers showed the importance, in the United States, of the number of times scholars' publications are cited for determining their bargaining power in academia. Not surprisingly, the question was soon raised whether citations are a good measure of scholarly merit. Are women at a disadvantage in male-dominated fields, such as economics? Studies had shown that authors tended to cite a larger proportion of publications by authors of the same gender. This paper examines whether women's disadvantage in garnering citations has been reduced by the increasing representation of women in economics and finds that this has been the case in both labor economics and economics in general, albeit not to the same degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines detailed data for faculty at a typical public research university in the United States between 1995 and 2004 to explore whether gender wage differentials can be explained by productivity differences. The level of detail - including the number of courses taught, enrollment, grant dollars, and number and impact of publications - largely eliminates the problem of unmeasured productivity, and the restriction to one firm eliminates unmeasured work conditions that confound investigations of wider labor markets. The authors find that direct productivity measures reduce the gender wage penalty to about 3 percent, only 1 percentage point lower than estimates from national studies of many institutions and with fewer productivity controls. The wage structure for women faculty differs markedly from the wage structure for men. Interpreted against the institutional features of wage setting for this population, the paper concludes that penalties for women arise at the department level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her 1986 book Women and the Law of Property in Early America, Marylynn Salmon concludes that the legal and economic changes experienced by early national and antebellum (pre-Civil War) United States women - which culminated in the passage of married women's property acts - were evolutionary rather than revolutionary. This paper examines changes in the economic status of women preceding the enactment of these statutes by analyzing new and valuable information: real-estate deeds and probate records in Henrico County, Virginia. Supplementing the diverse, yet limited, international and historical evidence on women's wealth holdings, this exploration of the asset accumulation of elite, free women in the southern US reveals that women's property holdings, personal and real, rose substantially over the 1780-1860 period. Thus, these results are consistent with those of other scholars, such as Marylynn Salmon, who document an increase in early national and antebellum women's economic status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether the contribution of the declining share of wages in national income to the upswing in profitability between 1982 and 1997 in the United States was aided by the growing incorporation of women into employment. The analysis finds that women helped moderate the decline in the aggregate wage share. The reduction in gender pay disparity overwhelmed the negative effect of women's growing share of market work on the wage share. However, in (one-digit) sectors where wage shares fell, women did not contribute to restraining the fall, indicating that the aggregate outcome was the net result of distinct sectoral trends in women's employment conditions. We argue that the perverse process of labor productivity falling faster than the real wage in the service sector may have played a key role in shaping the aggregate outcome. The post-1997 trends in the US are discussed in a postscript. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, a series of popular economics “Invest in Kids” (IIK) reports in the United States has called for increased investment in children's early education. These national reports articulate a new concept, the “public finance value” of children, and argue for increased investment in preschool because of its positive impact on the long-term fiscal health of the nation. This paper analyzes the IIK reports from 2003-6 to assess their attention to the multidimensional aspects of early care and education (ECE) in the US. Although the reports evaluate increased investment in preschool, they fail to recognize the need for a comprehensive system of ECE that includes support for childcare and the unpaid care and education provided by parents. As a result, the reports undervalue the contributions of women and of the ECE sector itself. Feminist economics offers a broader perspective that would help the IIK authors avoid conceptual traps and recognize the need for more comprehensive reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses dictator experiments to examine gender differences in altruistic behavior in the United States when decisions are made individually and jointly. In anonymous individual giving to charity, women give substantially more than men, and in paired settings, mixed-sex groups give the most while all male pairs give the least. Evidence supports social information and negotiation effects as participants change giving toward that of their partners. Social image effects are found only in mixed-sex groups, indicating a gender-based component to the value of the social signal sent. Although men and women appear to have similar influence, the positive social image effect pushes giving in mixed-sex pairs above the sum of the members' individual gifts because the less altruistic partners (usually men) adjust their giving upward more than the more altruistic partners (usually women) reduce giving. Therefore, increasing women's participation in traditionally male spheres of decision making may result in more altruistic economic behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the home-ownership implications of legal issues pertaining to marital status and of discrimination based on sexual orientation or marital status using United States 2000 Decennial Census data. Interesting differences are found between couple types in the effects of several variables. Same-sex couples are more likely than unmarried opposite-sex couples to own rather than rent homes but less likely to do so than married couples. In particular, the effects of household income and of a black householder are smaller for married couples than for same-sex and unmarried opposite-sex couples. Also, same-sex couples are not more likely to own homes in center city areas than elsewhere; married couples, however, are less likely to own homes in the city. Among high-income same-sex households, women are more likely than men to own homes but less likely to do so in US center city areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformation of African Americans into a working-class population began during the World War I Great Migration era. In response to the rise in racial intolerance and the urgency of migrants’ needs, the Pittsburgh Urban League was formed in 1918 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Using a historical case study, this article suggests that the League attempted to promote domesticity among married migrant women for the purpose of racial uplift. This paper examines the implications of this strategy for migrant households and Pittsburgh industry. The study explores the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism in the formation of working-class families by discussing the role of racial ideologies in this process. The author argues that studies of white women’s domesticity and reproductive labor also must address the ways in which race has affected their incorporation into capitalist class systems in countries where race is a central organizing feature of the political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eldercare, like other forms of care work, is often taken for granted and undervalued. The burdens as well as the failures of providing care for the elderly are often borne disproportionately by women. This paper documents inequality of access and low quality of care for the elderly in the United States. It argues that public funds used to subsidize nursing homes are poorly spent and that profit-maximizing competition in the nursing home industry adversely affects the quality of care provided. In seeking to address these problems, policy-makers can learn important lessons from several different sources. The experiences of several European countries, current regulatory efforts in the state of Massachusetts, and more decentralized volunteer efforts to promote humane visions of eldercare all offer some hope for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the US, marital status is more important than work history in determining economic security for many older women. Two-thirds of older women in the US receive spouse or widow Social Security benefits. These benefits generally require recipients to be currently married or to have had a ten-year marriage. Declining marriage rates, coupled with shorter marriages, dramatically change the distributional impact of these benefits on each cohort as they become eligible for Social Security. This paper uses June 1985, 1990, and 1995 CPS supplemental data to trace the decline in marital rates for women from five birth cohorts. We find that the proportion of persons who will be eligible as spouses or widows is decreasing modestly for whites and Hispanics, but dramatically for African Americans. This growing race gap in marital rates suggests that older black women will be particularly unlikely to qualify for these benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thoughtful economists have long been aware of the limitations of national accounting and GDP in measuring economic activity and material well-being. Feminist economists criticize the failure to count women's unpaid and reproductive work in measures of economic production. This paper examines the treatment of human milk production in national accounting guidelines. Human milk is an important resource produced by women. Significant maternal and child health costs result from children's premature weaning onto formula or solid food. While human milk production meets the standard national accounting criteria for inclusion in GDP, current practice is to ignore its significant economic value and the substantial private and public health costs of commercial breastmilk substitutes. Economic output measures such as GDP thus are incomplete and biased estimates of national food production and overall economic output, and they distort policy priorities to the disadvantage of women and children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares married-couple households and single-mother households in the same rural area of the United States with respect to both housework and other efforts household members make to provide through their own labor goods and services they would otherwise have to purchase in the market. I argue that single mothers are disadvantaged in ways not fully captured with reference to income levels alone (on which the concept of the feminization of poverty usually depends). I also seek to study the strategies single mothers employ to ensure the completion of necessary tasks of housework and childcare, as well as those of home repair and self-provisioning. Finally, I examine some of the costs of these various strategies in order to create a fuller understanding of the lives of single mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use a Nash-cooperative bargaining framework to examine how members of US family farm households allocate their time between work and leisure. Time allocation categories for parents include farm, off-farm, and household work, as well as leisure time; for children, the categories are farm work and leisure time. The analysis includes 227 Wisconsin dairy farm households. Most notably, the results confirm that US women and children make significant labor contributions and that both women and men are decision-makers regarding their own and their children's time allocation. The results also show that intra-household time allocation on US farms is gender specific, and that the father's economic status has the largest impact on the time allocation of household members. The findings also confirm that children's labor makes an important economic contribution to the operation of their family farm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper finds that black women earn 7 percent less than similarly skilled white women because of their race. Even within the same occupational category, black women earn 3 percent less than similarly qualified white women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, using data from the 1992 Boston Federal Reserve study of mortgage lending, reports preliminary evidence of patterns of gender and familial status discrimination that differ markedly by race in the US. White couples with children experienced familial status discrimination if the female partner was in the labor market, but not if she was at home raising her children. However, African-American or Hispanic couples with children suffered familial status discrimination if she stayed home to raise her children, but much less so, if at all, if she was in the labor market. This pattern of racial differentiation may reflect social norms dating back to slavery that have favored labor force participation for African-American and Hispanic mothers but not white mothers. On the other hand, it was true across racial groups that single women, more than single men, were disadvantaged in the mortgage market by children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes employment hours, supplemented by interview data, from large highway construction sites in Boston, Los Angeles, and Oakland in the 1980s and 1990s. This study suggests that affirmative action positively affects the employment of women in construction and where there is more pressure, there are stronger results. Second, white women and women of color tend to work in trades that reflect the existing racial hierarchies among men. Therefore race as well as gender should be reflected in the design and measurement of the impacts of employment programs. Community organizing, advocacy for women and men of color, judicial oversight and positive efforts by unions and employers are still critical to bridging the gap between policy intentions and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to critiques of the content and methodology of neoclassical economics, feminist economists have also offered constructive reflections on the way economics is taught. The "Voluntary Economics Content Standards for PreCollege Economics Education," developed in 1997 by the U.S. National Council of Economic Education, present yet another challenge to feminist economic educators. In this paper, we first review general methods for challenging and expanding these standards. Next, we select a specific content standard and explore how it might be reworked to reflect more accurately feminist economic scholarship and pedagogy. This reformulation of the standard will help broaden the pedagogy and content that are both implicit and explicit in all of the standards, allowing for a more inclusive classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1970, as in previous decades, the U.S. Bureau of the Census's household enumeration began with a lead question as to who was the 'head of household'. With the resurgence of feminism, this concept was challenged as an ambiguous concept which implied an authority structure imputed by the Bureau not measured, and offensive to many people. This paper tells the story of successful feminist mobilization in the 1970s that led to the removal of this concept from the U.S. decennial censuses beginning with 1980. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consumer price index (CPI) is used in the United States to measure changes in the cost of living. Since the CPI is used to index the official U.S. poverty guidelines and to establish eligibility criteria for various public assistance programs, a change in the methodology used to calculate the CPI would impact the accuracy of poverty statistics and, more importantly, poor families' access to public assistance. Since the majority of these poor families are headed by women, the CPI becomes a critical issue for feminist economics. In December 1996 the United States Senate Finance Committee's Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index issued its final report which concluded that use of the consumer price index results in widespread substantial overindexing. This paper uses the basic needs budgets (BNB) to evaluate changes in the cost of living for low-income families. The author compares the cost of the BNBs for single-parent families in 1983 and 1996 and finds that the cost of the bundle of goods and services included in the BNBs has increased faster than the CPI. The author finds similar results for two-parent families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

''Economics Without Money; Sex Without Gender'' critiques Tomas Philipson and Richard Posner's neoclassically-based model of sexual ''trades'', which argues that ''market'' mechanisms will be largely sufficient to control the AIDS epidemic. As feminist economists have pointed out, such neoclassically-based models rest upon strong assumptions regarding the availability of information, the partners' egotism, the absence of extra-economic coercion, and the ability of all parties to exit the market. In so doing, these models ignore the ways in which political, social, and cultural inequalities (e.g., race, gender, class, and nationality) may systematically bias market negotiations, including those over safe sex. The paper critiques the model's neoclassical assumptions and its prescriptions for public policy in the areas of epidemiology, HIV testing, and public subsidies for HIV/AIDS education and AIDS-related medical research. Finally, it discusses the impact of these inequalities on safe-sex negotiations in the case of the US low-income bi/heterosexual women, especially women of color, for whom AIDS is now the leading cause of death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses 1994-95 faculty salary data from over 1,100 four-year U.S. academic institutions, about one-fourth of them with collective bargaining agreements, to ask if faculty unions make a difference to gender pay equity. Average gender salary differences are negative at every rank and at every category of U.S. institution with or without collective bargaining agreement. Unions may improve gender salary differentials somewhat, particularly at the assistant professor level. There is no evidence that this gain will be lost at higher levels, and mixed evidence that further gains occur for women at the full professor level. The most pervasive and robust consequence of unions is to increase the positive impact that higher proportions of women at senior faculty ranks make on relative salaries at the assistant professor level. However, the influence of these higher-ranked women on gender salary inequalities at the associate and full levels is lower in union schools than nonunion schools. By reducing the flexibility of existing salary structures, collective bargaining apparently reduces the influence of senior women faculty on the salaries of current women faculty members while increasing their attention and influence at entry levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper accepts the thesis that marriage decisions reflect rational behavior based on weighing benefits and costs. It develops a concept of a marriage price that measures the excess services one spouse provides to the other when there are differences in the number of men and women seeking marriage partners. This price includes income, time allocation to household activities, and control over forms of intimacy and beauty styles. In contrast to Grossbard-Shechtman's strict choice model, this model highlights the patriarchal privileges of husbands. It identifies some of the factors which affect marriage price in the United States and assesses the impact of recent U.S. governmental initiatives to increase marriage rates, including the male employment proposals made by William Julius Wilson. The theoretical model developed here shows that proposals that increase the personal value women place on marriage raise the marriage price they must pay, as well as increasing marriage rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between feminism and lesbianism, arguing both that feminism has encouraged and supported lesbianism, and that the existence of lesbian feminism supports both feminist goals in general and heterosexual feminists in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist literature has highlighted the way in which pregnancy and childbearing signal ''difference'' from the male labor market norm. The issue of breastfeeding adds complexity to this analysis. This paper argues that, in labor market terms, there are costs attached to breastfeeding for most women. However, health-focused research indicates that there are also significant benefits conferred by breastfeeding to mothers, infants, employers and wider society in industrialized as well as in so-called ''developing'' economies. In this essay, I argue that although the dominant American discourse on infant feeding emphasizes personal preference on the part of individual women there are, in fact, significant economic and employment-related factors which impinge on infant feeding options. In particular, those women in the most disadvantaged positions in the labor market are, in general, the most constrained in terms of such choice. However, while pregnancy and childbirth have been the subject of intense feminist interest and debate, breastfeeding and its intersection with women's increasing participation in paid work has not been foregrounded either within feminist equality/difference debates or within recent labor market analyses. Finally, it is suggested that feminist analyses of labor market issues, including debates about parental/family leave, need to incorporate both the costs and benefits of breastfeeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents editorial policies on statistical reporting and orienting papers for an international audience of Feminist Economics journal in the United States. Requirements of editorial policies; Announcement of institutional subscribers outside the United States; List of instructions to articles oriented to the audience.