Ann R. Tickamyer

Nonrecursive models of labor force participation, fertility behavior and sex role attitudes.

A negative relationship has been established between female labor force participation and fertility but there has been considerable controversy over the direction and causes of this relationship. 2 causal models of the actual fertility and work behavior of a national sample of married women aged 30 in 1970 are examined using the 2-stage least-squares technique to disentangle reciprocal effects. A 2-variable feedback loop incorporating only fertility and labor force participation and a 3-variable model which adds sex role attitudes to the endogenous variables are included. Much of the work-fertility relationship can be accounted for by controlling background variables such as education and marital duration yet a negative effect from fertility to labor force participation remains. Adding sex role attitudes to the model as a potential source and consequence of fertility and work behavior slightly reduces the size of this effect. In sum the results seem to indicate that the worker and mother roles were to some extent incompatible for these young married women. For this cohort at least the childbearing and rearing role appears to have taken precedence. Work behavior was influenced by the number of children the women had during their 20s; childbearing was not influenced by their work.(AUTHORS MODIFIED)

Voices of Welfare Reform: Bureaucratic Rationality Versus the Perceptions of Welfare Participants

This article compares the assumptions of welfare reform with the way the program is actually implemented to show the underlying contradictions in the way policy is politically justified and implemented. The results of focus group discussions with women on welfare in four rural Appalachian Ohio counties demonstrate the disparities between the top-down goals of welfare policy and the bottom-up perceptions of their outcomes.

Models of Fertility and Women's Work:

Comments on an article by Cramer in an earlier issue of the Journal (1980). The most basic question raised is the appropriateness of using nonrecursive models to study the work-fertility relationship. The authors argue that such models are appropriate under equilibrium conditions and that the assumption that these conditions were met in the authors 1978 data was not unreasonable. Other issues concern the inadequacy of the instruments in the authors 1978 paper. Cramer virtually dismissed the results based on his replication of a 2-stage least squares model a model which the authors note was flawed. The authors further demonstrate the robustness of their own results using Cramers recommended sensitivity analysis on their own model and data. The effect of work on fertility is shown to be effectively zero under a variety of model specifications. It is argued that Cramer was incorrect in concluding that the authors results were due to statistical problems. (authors modified)

The impact of welfare reform on the parenting role of women in rural communities

Current family policy suggests that in order to restore family values we, as a society, need to focus on reviving a child-centered household. Full-time mothering is lauded as an honorable choice that will advance this goal and ultimately strengthen traditional family values. However, current welfare policy is contrary to this notion in that mandatory welfare-to-work programs deny women receiving public assistance the choice to be full-time mothers. Based on in-depth interviews with female welfare recipients in four rural Appalachian counties, this paper evaluates the problems women face as they confront the difficult choices of being either a “good mother” or a “good recipient.” From a feminist perspective, findings suggest that welfare reform programs in rural communities have put poor women in a proverbial “catch-22” with regard to effective parenting. Although many of the women strive to be ideal mothers as defined by societal standards, they often find that they cannot carry out the role effectively because of welfare reform regulations.

Fertility and patterns of labor force participation among married women.

Variations in womens response to childbearing and participation in the labor force are examined with the expectation that 2 distinct patterns will emerge clarifying the fertility-work effect. The hypothesis is offered that 1 group of women will drop out entirely at the onset of childbearing, returning to work after the children have grown, if at all. Another group will work almost continuously with almost no gap in labor force participation. Past research, concentrating on averaged direction of causal flow, have obscured this bimodal distribution. 3 problems hamper the study of fertility effects on career discontinuity: detailed work and birth histories covering extended periods of time are scarce, variables often obscure variability, and censored histories are frequent in which the timing of an event may or may not occur until after the survey and therefore cannot be observed. Data for the analysis are from the 1970 EEO survey (Explorations in Equaltiy of Opportunity), a national sample survey of women who were high school sophomores in 1955. Using only complete data from women who were still married to their 1st husbands yielded a sample size of 703. Of these, 39% were working in 1970 and 85% had 2 or more children. Employment status, recorded for each year, was a dichotomous variable distinguishing between no employment during the year and any employment. The fertility variable indicated if a child was or was not adopted or born during the year. The women were much more likely to work before their 1st birth than afterwards, at least during the early adult years covered by this survey. Women who began childbearing while still in high school were more likely to continue working after birth. College graduates were also somewhat more likely to continue working after their 1st birth. 70% of the women worked before their 1st birth, 30% after the onset of childbearing. Work discontinuity, measured by the number of gaps in employment indicate that over 50% of the childless women have continuous work histories compared to 3% of the women with 4 or more children. 30% of the women with large families have 2 or more gaps and this group is also more likely to never have worked. Controlling for censored or truncated histories, a bimodal distribution is observed in analyzing time lapse in return to work after the 1st birth for women who were working at the time of the 1st birth. 35% continue to work without a detectable break and over 40% do not return after 5 or more years. Examining different parities reveals that the more children a woman will have, the less likely she is to continue working without a gap after her 1st birth and the more likely she is to have stayed out for an extended period. The dual pattern is still evident among higher parity women. Women who were not working at the time of their 1st birth are unlikely to enter the work force within 5 years of that birth. The association with small families (parity 1) is unclear due to the small number of cases. Different parity progressions have different patterns of labor force participation. 52% of the childless women and 38% parity 1 have continuous work histories, a rarity for women with 2 or more children. The results support several theoretical explanations. Normative interpretation may depict women oriented to traditional roles as allowing fertility to influence other decisions, while women oriented to the work role are influenced by work opportunity. The human capital interpretation suggests that women would be less likely to leave jobs with a high penalty for discontinuation, however all women who dropped out would be likely to stay out as their household labor became relatively more valuable than wage labor. The concept of career lines takes into consideration compatibility and prestige. Women in jobs with expected growth in salary and prestige will tend to have continuous work histories if the jobs are compatible with childbearing and if substantial losses are associated with gaps in participation.

The Impact of Affirmative Action in Higher Education: Perceptions from the Front Line

Abstract: Campus Affirmative Action officers are conspicuously absent from the research literature on the impact of Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunity mandates in higher education. This study reports opinions of AA/EEO directors in research and doctorate-granting institutions concerning the impact of AA/EEO officers on the professional ranks of the academy and investigates the influence of various organizational, program, and individual variables on those views.

Between Modernism and Postmodernism: Lenski's Power and Privilege in the Study of Inequalities

Gerhard Lenskis classical work on stratification, Power and Privilege, was an effort to reconcile and to synthesize different approaches to inequality incorporated into the grand theories of the day. It anticipated a variety of developments in the theoretical and empirical understanding of inequalities. These include recognition of the multiplicity of inequalities; emphasis on race, class, gender, and other sources and systems of domination and subordination; and the intersection of these factors in complex patterns to create different standpoints and life consequences. The result was groundbreaking work that underscored the multidimensionality of stratification systems, the variability of their influences, and the notion that their intersection in itself has implications beyond the sum of component parts. In these ways his work foreshadowed the possibilities of finding common ground between modern and postmodern perspectives, to make Lenski the last grand theorist of modernity and a forerunner of postmodern theories of inequality.

Career mobility and satisfaction of women administrators in postsecondary education: A review and research agenda

The purpose of this article is to examine the formal and informal organizational and environmental structures and processes that influence the opportunities, achievements, and satisfaction of women administrators in postsecondary education. A model is developed that synthesizes the research from human capital and structural approaches to occupational mobility and applies it to university contexts. Emphasis is placed on the structural factors, including organizational characteristics, and membership in formal and informal networks. A set of hypotheses is derived from this model. Gaps in current literature and research and proposed avenues for future research are discussed.

Politics as a Vocation

This study examines an idea proposed by Max Weber, that politicians can be differentiated by whether they have a vocational or avocational orientation to politics. After theoretical exploration of the occupational and vocational attributes of political roles, the impact of vocationalism on political decision-making is tested using data collected on North Carolina state legislators.