Fertility, sex role attitudes, and labor force participation

INFLUENCES OF GENDER IDEOLOGY AND HOUSEWORK ALLOCATION ON WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT OVER THE LIFE COURSE

The study investigates the influences of women's attitudes about gender and couples' housework allocation patterns on women's employment status and work hours across the life course. The influence of these factors on the employment characteristics of continuously married women is investigated at four time points: 1977, 1980, 1985, and 1993. Data come from the Intergenerational Panel Study of Parents and Children and the analysis sample includes 556 continuously married women. Findings from structural equation, fixed effects, and tobit models offer consistent evidence of long-term positive influences of women's egalitarian gender ideology and men's participation in routine housework on women's labor force participation. The results provide support for hypotheses based on the notion of lagged adaptation.

Explaining Fertility in Urban-Dwelling Brazilian Women: Importance of Traditional Sex-Role Attitudes and Religious Orthodoxy

Path analysis was used to study the determinants of fertility in 221 urban-dwelling Brazilian women. Traditional sex-role attitudes and religious orthodoxy directly and positively affected family size. Religious orthodoxy also indirectly influenced fertility via its positive influence on traditional sex-role attitudes. Socioeconomic group affected fertility only by way of association with attitudes and beliefs. Contrary to expectation, participation in the labor force had no effect on the number of children women bore. Analysis within socioeconomic groups showed that determinants of fertility vary for women in different stages of cultural development.