More U.S. Women Swap Briefcase for Diaper BagMarch 10, 2006— More and more American women are swapping briefcases and office suits for dungarees and diaper bags as they opt to stay home and raise children, putting the brakes on decades of female advances in the workplace.
For the first time in the post-feminist era, the number of working women has begun to retreat, with even graduates from prestigious universities giving up promising careers for old-fashioned domesticity.
A new magazine launched in California has seized on the trend: the cover of "Total 180!" shows a slender, radiant woman balancing her daughter on one hip as she tosses her briefcase into the trash.
"With practical information that validates, supports, and reassures their lifestyle, Total 180! is the sustenance for professional women turned stay-at-home moms," the magazine's Web site says.
Some six million women have chosen to leave the workforce to stay home and raise their children, the magazine's chief editor, Erika Kotite, told AFP.
But they feel isolated, she said, and the magazine aims to address their needs "with humor and lightheartedness." But not everyone sees this positively, especially feminists who fought decades ago to open workplace doors to women.
Rose Olver, a professor of women's studies at Amherst College in Massachusetts, called the trend "somewhat alarming."
"Women in the 1970s fought for access and my sense is that the urgency to open the work place to women has subsided," Olver said.
"Opportunities open for women may decrease" in the future if more women drop out, she said. "The older generation feel maybe a bit put out that this generation is so cavalierly assuming that these possibilities will be open to them."
"The child-rearing issue is much thornier than many feminists thought it would be," said Linda Fowler of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
"What feminist theorists thought was that, if enough women were in the workplace in high-scale and highly qualified jobs, the whole workplace economy would be more humanized. That has not happened," Fowler told AFP. "There is still a difference on obstacles women face as they are trying to juggle a career and family."
But behind the debate of whether the trend is good or bad is a broader stagnation or even decline in women holding jobs in the U.S. workplace after rising for 50 years straight.
"The new factor at play is the change in the trend in the female participation rate, which has edged down on balance since 2000 after having risen for five decades," said a White House report last month.
In 2000, 77 percent of women between 25 and 54 held a job in the United States. By 2005, the level had dropped to 75 percent, a significant demographic shift.
How much the data represents voluntary workplace dropouts by women and how much they are forced is still debated.
Kim Gandy, president of the feminist National Organization of Women, which helped promote working women from the 1960s, said the decline of women in the U.S. workforce reflects in part simple economics: the fall in overall jobs since the U.S. economy slowed sharply in 2000.
However, she said that other factors, like wages and the cost of childcare, impact working women much more than men. "When good jobs are plentiful, it becomes easier to cover the cost of child care with your wages."
"When wages are depressed ... it becomes a much closer question as to whether it's worth a tradeoff."
Often in families it is the woman rather than the man who weighs her own income against household costs, deciding whether or not to keep a job, Gandy said.
"There are definitely some women whose wage work does not bring in enough money in order to make a significant impact on the family," she said. "You might say that in her case she could make a choice, but most women don't see it as a choice."
