The Economic and Social Status of British Women

The economic activities and social standing of women are often confused in the same term “status”. Furthermore, improvements in women’s economic “status” in industrial societies are commonly held to account for demographic changes such as falling fertility and rising divorce. This paper takes a closer look at the work of women in the British economy to suggest that the connections between paid work and “status” are not so simple. While paid work can imply command over resources, autonomy and social respect, how much it does so depends upon a number of features of the job and the worker’s family. These include: working conditions, physical and social; hours; pay; control over earnings; prestige of the occupation, among others. On the whole, for men, both power and social prestige is correlated with the salary of their full-time job. For women this is less true, and the picture complicated by the time spent in unpaid work, not employed at all or working part-time. The diverse ways in which women combine their paid and unpaid duties create ceilings on the advance of their economic independence, and therefore also limit the extent to which the female labour market can be held responsible for changes in the family.