Marriage Bars: Discrimination Against Married Women Workers, 1920's to 1950's / Claudia Goldin.

By:

Goldin, Claudia

Contributor(s):

National Bureau of Economic Research

Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w2747.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1988.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Online resources:

Available additional physical forms:

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Abstract: Modern personnel practices, social consensus, and the Depression acted in concert to delay the emergence of married women in the American economy through an institution known as the "marriage bar." Marriage bars were policies adopted by firms and local school boards, from about the early 1900's to 1950, to fire single women when they married and not to hire married women. I explore their determinants using firm-level data from 1931 and 1940 and find they are associated with promotion from within, tenure-based salaries, and other modern personnel practices. The marriage bar, which had at its height affected 751 of all local school boards and more than 50% of all office workers, was virtually abandoned in the 1950's when the cost of limiting labor supply greatly increased.

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Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w2747 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

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Previous	nber w27467 Fixing Misallocation with Guidelines: Awareness vs. Adherence /	nber w27468 Class Rank and Long-Run Outcomes /	nber w27469 Home Prices, Fertility, and Early-Life Health Outcomes /	nber w2747 Marriage Bars: Discrimination Against Married Women Workers, 1920's to 1950's /	nber w27470 The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: Which Firms Won? Which Lost? /	nber w27471 The Hidden Costs of Strategic Opacity /	nber w27472 Rational Sentiments and Economic Cycles /	Next

October 1988.

Modern personnel practices, social consensus, and the Depression acted in concert to delay the emergence of married women in the American economy through an institution known as the "marriage bar." Marriage bars were policies adopted by firms and local school boards, from about the early 1900's to 1950, to fire single women when they married and not to hire married women. I explore their determinants using firm-level data from 1931 and 1940 and find they are associated with promotion from within, tenure-based salaries, and other modern personnel practices. The marriage bar, which had at its height affected 751 of all local school boards and more than 50% of all office workers, was virtually abandoned in the 1950's when the cost of limiting labor supply greatly increased.