At the same time, most Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) countries have seen a decline of the fertility rate and the
size of families. The demographic characteristics of motherhood changed. For
instance, women in the UK bore 3.5 children on average in 1900. A century later,
the fertility rate had declined to less than half that number (1.64), similar trends
occurring in other OECD countries.
It would be naïve to assume that the number of children per family diminished
because women didn’t like mothering any more, or that they entered the labour
force because they longed for ‘self-realization’ through a paid job. When one
salary isn’t enough to feed the family, two must work. Socio-political
discussions and moral arguments respond to, and at times reinforce, economic
changes, which in the event found expression in society-wide contestations of
gender roles. Since gender roles are instilled in children from the earliest age, as
they learn the values and interactional norms of the society in which they grow
up, change does not happen overnight.
But when it happens the question what it is to be feminine or masculine, which
may have lain dormant for a long time, resurfaces. Not too long ago, many
people would have considered ‘female trucker’ and ‘male nurse’ incongruous
(and some still do). Engineering, construction, accounting, and law were more or
less exclusively male domains, whereas elementary school teachers, secretaries,
nurses, and cashiers were overwhelmingly female. As long as both men and
women believed in divergent natural talents and aptitudes, this wasn’t much of
an issue, especially because men and women work in different occupations in
countries around the world, which lends credence to the notion of natural
dispositions. However, the feminist critique addressed occupational segregation
head-on, turning gender into a focal element of the identity discourse.
Theories about occupational segregation focus on different aspects of gender
division of labour. Some assume that men and women have different
preferences. Because of their family orientation, women attach less importance
to their professional life than men do. Others see the discrimination of women in
the workplace originating in male workers’ dislike of working with women.
Given this, every woman hired will disrupt the work process reducing managers’
willingness to employ women. Yet other theories have emphasized statistical
discrimination in the sense that employers hire staff based on their experience,
which tells them that male applicants have higher average skills.