A Woman's Place Is on the Job

IN a suburb of Washington, D.C., a six-year-old child was surprised to find that his playmate's mother was at home one noon, preparing lunch. The six-year-old piped up: "What's the matter with your mother? Can't she work?"

Of all the social verities that have recently been called into question, none has crumbled quite so rapidly as the belief that a woman's place is in the home --full time. Today a record 43% of all U.S. women--32 million strong--are in the nation's labor force, many in jobs that might have cowed Rosie the Riveter. They now constitute 37.5% of the work force and more are streaming into the job market every day.

The accelerating change is a result not only of the rise of Women's Lib (see TIME Essay, page 36), but of a complex of other social, legal and economic factors. Women are getting more formal education--42% of last June's college graduates were women--and they want to put their degrees to work. Now that civil rights laws bar discrimination by sex, more and more women are demanding relatively high-pay, blue-collar jobs. Federal courts have ruled against companies that refused to hire women as railway agents and telephone switchmen. In the courts, women are now challenging a variety of work rules, including company policies against assigning women to premium-pay night work. Certainly discrimination exists, especially in the higher ranks. The percentage of women in architecture, college teaching and some other professions has dropped significantly since World War II, and it is still rare to find women in corporate boardrooms.

Working Mothers. The most dramatic change has occurred among married women. Only 30% of them were in the nation's work force a decade ago; today, more than 40% of them are. The new trend is partly due to male willingness; one recent survey showed that half of the men questioned would not object if their wives took a job. Mostly, however, it is the wives who have changed their minds.

An increasing number of them have abandoned the notion that children need a full-time mother. Just under 50% of all U.S. women who have school-age children also hold down jobs; so do 30% of women who have children under six years of age. The change in the mother-in-the-home attitude is reflected in the draft of President Nixon's Family Assistance Plan, which would require many welfare mothers either to seek jobs or enroll in training programs if their children are under five. Although child-care centers are still a rarity in most communities, more and more of them are being opened by Government agencies, labor unions and even neighborhood organizations.

An End to Worry. The twin evils of inflation and unemployment among men force many women to seek jobs, but certainly not all of them do so because of economic need. All together 43% of the female work force is made up of married women whose husbands earn $5,000 a year or more. Mrs. Gloria Johnson, an official of the International Union of Electrical Workers (one-third of whose members are women), notes that the desire of married women to take jobs increases rather than decreases as they and their husbands turn the corner from being fairly poor to being fairly well off. These women join the labor force to extend their families' economic reach beyond the main breadwinner's grasp, and often with his encouragement. For families of almost any income level, a second paycheck can mean an end to worry and a new ability to take faraway vacations or send the children to camp and college.

This is particularly true of nonwhite women, half of whom are in the work force. In some schools in Washington, D.C., half of the teachers are black women who are married to men who hold relatively modest-paying jobs in the Postal Service. Many such couples have combined incomes of $15,000; they can, and do, buy new houses and cars and send their children to college.

Buying Respect. The women's work ethic also applies to middle-income families. In Houston, Mrs. Marjorie Wrigley, 31, took a secretarial job a year ago to supplement her husband's $11,000 annual income as a supervisor for an oil-equipment firm. Even though more than half of her $7,000-a-year salary goes for the care of their two children and other work-related expenses, the second paycheck has helped. "It seemed that our arguments always centered on how our money should be spent," Mrs. Wrigley says. "With more coming in, we give each other wider latitude." Their recent purchases have included a 16-ft. motorboat and some new home decorations.

Even fairly affluent women are increasingly lured by that extra check. Typical is a mother of four in suburban Potomac, Md., who revealed her financial picture with the stipulation that she remain anonymous. Though her husband earns $23,500 a year as a Government lawyer, his income is not enough to buy luxuries. So she took a $10,000-a-year teaching job. Since then, the couple has bought a new $60,000 home, two new cars, color TV and other appliances, and plans to take a one-month family vacation in Italy this summer. "When I put my check on the dining-room table, I get respect," she says. "I do not get that ironing shirts."

Indeed, the rise of workingwomen is caused at least as much by their desire for respect as for cold cash. If the trend to working mothers seems uncaring and unwise, defenders of it point out that a second paycheck often allows fathers to spend more time with their children. Not only is Dad freed of some pressure to work overtime and struggle for promotion, but he also feels an obligation to get home and help Mother with the chores.

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