Can anyone explain to me why the addition of women to the paid workforce did not result in decreased working hours for all?

Wages have stagnated over the last 30 years so two wages are now necessary even amongst the middle class. In the past working class women would have worked but now more women have to work.

The capitalist class benefit in several ways, more workers means greater productivity, stagnating wages means higher profit margins. This is a necessary phase in capitalism because as marx predicted profits would fall and ways would have to be found to mitigate against diminishing profits.
Also every worker becomes a consumer. Women who work have control (we would hope!) over the money that she earns, she becomes an individual consumer. Most working women could attest to just how expensive working is when you factor in travel, clothes, child care, lunch, coffee, training courses etc,

Globally women make up something like 2/3rds of the worlds workforce and in developing countries they make up something like 2/3rd of the poorest in society.

In the west we benefit as consumers from the exploitation not of men but of women workers.

if more poeple are working then more people will have a disposable income and thus more commodities bought and thus more employment oppertunities.

i know what you mean though, it isnt just that so many more women are working than ever have done, machines are constantly taking the place of the old labour-intensive work, a large digger on a building site must put 10 people out of work, i do sometimes wonder why we havent got an enourmous unemployment problem.

I think part of it must be do to with how changes in class structure have changed the economy and the history of domestic work. Pre-WWI, one of the biggest sectors of employment was domestic service - I think it was the single biggest employer of women. As class structures slowly began to change after WWI and clerical and retail jobs began to open up to women, women opted for these over service where you had to live in and couldn't on the whole marry. By the end of WWII, a lack of people willing to work in domestic service combined with technological changes like household appliances and the spread of electricity and gas, plus the manufactured ideal of the housewife, meant that living without servants (or at least with only piecemeal help like having a cleaner or a nanny) became the norm for the middle classes. This was a huge, huge shock for the middle classes collectively - naturally the burden of it mostly fell on women and they got fed up with conforming to the housewife ideal. This contributed to the rise of feminism amongst middle class women post-war.

Then you also get a massive expansion of the middle class, so that people who had been working class and always looked after themselves domestically mostly continued to do so once they were middle class. Combine this with a situation where you have rising house prices, inflation and changes in family structure, and you pretty much have to have two incomes, as well as have to look after all your own domestic stuff at the same time. This of course had always been the norm for working class families - working class women have always done work on the side, and everyone in a family who was of an age to earn or work on the land would have been expected to do so.

I would say caplitalism as a systen is not anti-femist.
But many capitalist societies are sexist IYSWIM.

Capitalism as it was envisaged by Adam Smith, sounds pretty okay actually. He talked a lot about small entrepreneurs making things at home or selling stuff from a small shop or stall. Very different to the multi nationals that now dominate our society

Individual enterprise from the home (textile work, taking in washing, keeping chickens, brewing beer, running a shop from one room) has long been done by women. And I think such enterprise is inherently capitalist, so it's hard to make a statement that capitalism is inherently anti-feminist.

I suppose one interesting question is, what is the barrier to entry to any particular income stream for women?

If male gatekeepers have control of who gets jobs, whether in a capitalist structure or in a planned state structure, then that structure may well operate in an anti-feminist way. Ditto for access to education, capital and asset ownership.

5th biggest in the world

mind-boggling

I suppose contraception must have had an impact?

If you are permanently pregnant / giving birth / breastfeeding and you have 8 kids then that limits scope for work outside the home? Not sure on that just a thought. What do people think? Obviously before the industrial revolution it was different but afterwards with fixed shifts and stuff.... Dunno.

I think the NHS is one of the worlds biggest employers though every time I think that i think it must be wrong! Will see if i can find whether that is true or not!

Lucie my grandmothers both worked as well, they were both nurses.

Surely WC women always worked? Both of my grandmas (one aged 90), one dead, worked before and after marriage/kids.

Isn't the NHS the UK's biggest employer and a very big employer of women? Before the NHS most people had very little healthcare unless they were well off and many illnesses werew basically untreatable. The NHS alone is probably responsible for a large growth in jobs.

Am I correct in then saying that capitalism is inherently anti feminist?

I think a better description is 'amoral'. After all, it suited capitalism to employ and accommodate large numbers of women when there was munitions and armaments to be manufactured.

neverquitesure I'm not well versed in history. But I was under the impression that the majority of people are working class. Most of these women will be in paid employment, be it as cleaners, govenors, cooks, wet nurse. Basically women's work.

Or if they are in a society that's more argricultural and/or tribal, then they'll be working the fields, providing communal day care, cooking, weaving etc. But their men won't really be in paid employment either.

neverquitesure - Yes there are more paid jobs now looking after the old, sick and disabled that would have been largely done unpaid by women. These are mainly poorly paid jobs. Although of course lots of women do still do unpaid carer workv

Firstly, women have always worked in paid employment - even when married with children.

Secondly, the types of jobs available change over time. E.g. I would guess that significantly fewer people are employed in manufacturing now than 60 years ago. Also, I'm sure there were no pizza delivery drivers 60 years ago!

Thirdly, a lot of people do work reduced hours and have more holidays than before WW2.

I would also imagine that 2 workers sharing one job has an impact. There are 2 people employed where one would have been previously. I would also imagine your point about childcare is right. If both parents are working, a market is created for childcare. Consequently, people are employed in that sector.

The more people (be they men or women) you add to a labour market, the more money it will make as each person will spend in the economy. In theory.

Interesting link Bonsoir.

Can anyone explain to me why the addition of women to the paid workforce did not result in decreased working hours for all?

From a business point of view, if you have (for example) job share you potentially end up with double the recruitment costs, double the training costs, and other additional expenses than if you employed one person full time for the same role (e.g. two laptops rather than one if it's a working from home professional role).

Of course, you may get favourable benefits by employing two part-time workers (e.g. longer tenure) but these tend to be intangible benefits versus the tangible costs.

First, like someone has pointed out, your assumption is that there is only a fixed amount of hours of work to be done in a country. Secondly, you are also assuming that all workers are equal. And that women entering the workforce replaces some of the men-hours. This is not true at all. A lot of industries still struggle, in this climate, to recruit staff. We are becoming more specialise in our professions, and that not all person-hours are actually equal.

I think I heard that at the start of the queens reign, 35% of women eligible to work i.e. right age, not too ill or disabled, were working outside the home.

neverquitesure - Welcome and it is great that you have posted here. I find here much gentler than AIBU, unless the poster is of the opinion that all feminists are a bunch of moaning, hairy, lesbians. Although I am .

I am hardly an expert in this but -

1. The amount of work is not fixed. New services and goods exist that didn't exist 50 years ago. Look at how common it is for families to get take aways, eat in restaurants, own more than a small amount of clothes, get their nails done, etc. All of these create jobs that didn't used to exist.

We are also encouraged these days to replace perfectly good goods/clothes when at one time, people would have used stuff until it wore out. Again jobs are created to make stuff, trades people such as painters, etc. The expansion in healthcare has created lots of new jobs as well.

1. The cost of living has went up, but crucially what we purchase has also increased. People do live in better heated, decorated and furnished homes than they did 50-60 years ago - certainly amongst the working class they do. More people have cars or travel further in public transport. IMO people forget the abject poverty many working class people lived in 50-60 years ago.

1. People on average work less hours in the past. Someone always posts in response to this that their bank manage father worked less hours than they did - and it is true for some middle class jobs the hours and pay are worse. But for the majority of the population, working hours have decreased.

1. And yes women have always worked either in the home, or taking in piece work from outside. It is only middle class and upper class women (and the middle class was smaller) who for some decades did not work outside the home once they marry and some skilled working class women. But many women did still work.

Girls who failed to find a husband became governesses. It wasn't something women did to pass the time before they got married.