21/08/13
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2624453/Goldin_PowerPill.pdf?sequence=4
The link above is to Goldin and Katz's paper 'The Power of the Pill.'
Findings:
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| Women working in 1970's America |
- By enabling women to delay marriage and childbirth and divorce these from sexual activity, the Pill increased women's incentives to invest time and effort in acquiring the skills necessary to get well paid jobs.
- Particularly seen in in relation to roles in the professions which take a long time to acquire but which have major long term pay offs in terms of better pay.
- In 1966 40% of women emerging from US universities with a bachelor's degree had specialised in education and only 2% in business.
- The comparable figures today are 12% and 50%.
- If the Pill was empowering these choices in the US, it seems reasonable to expect that something similar was happening in the UK.
