Comments on: Invisible Women

By: GDP is ageist but not sexist | Pseudoerasmus

GDP is ageist but not sexist | Pseudoerasmus — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 03:39:42 +0000

[…] Alexander of Slate Star Codex asked in his blogpost “Invisible Women” why the entry of women into the American labour force doesn’t seem to show up in the […]

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By: RJMeyers

RJMeyers — Thu, 10 Jul 2014 21:24:27 +0000

Assuming that women are roughly as productive as men, and noticing that their workforce participation rate is both an exponential function (as is GDP growth) and has its most dramatic rise from the 1940s – present (as does GDP growth), it makes sense that when you add them into the economy you would still end up with a relatively smooth exponential fit for GDP.

I would only expect a noticeable discontinuity in GDP if their participation exponentially shot up very early (sometime in 1790s – 1900, when GDP was still in “liftoff”) or if their entry into the workforce was much more dramatic, almost a step function. As it is, when you account for tech and knowledge being the major part of GDP, women entering the workforce are a minor, time-aligned, directionally-aligned (increase, not a decrease) exponential contribution to a much more powerful exponential trend.

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By: Phil Goetz

Phil Goetz — Mon, 07 Jul 2014 20:04:21 +0000

GDP is adjusted for inflation. If women entering the workforce leads to families having more disposable income leads to inflation, the effect would be invisible in GDP. Check the inflation rates versus women in the workforce. The US had its longest period of high inflation in history from 1968-1983.

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By: E. Antony Gray (@RiverC)

E. Antony Gray (@RiverC) — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 21:03:35 +0000

Not to mention that women were working before, and the equivalent value of a man’s wages was worth both of their labor. Putting them in the ‘workforce’ merely rationalizes that value, which must in that case cut the rationalized value of the man’s wages, though if both man & woman are in the workforce the total should be the same.

– In the old system, bachelor men and lazy wives were partial free-riders.

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By: James A. Donald

James A. Donald — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 07:52:03 +0000

But so far I’ve never heard the conspiracy theory that women never actually entered the workforce, that all the working women you see around you are animatronic robots or carefully crafted stage illusions.

Sure you have. Neoreactionaries all the time say that most women in the workforce are doing makework created for women, for example HR and government employment, rather than the real productive work that men do.

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By: Meagan

Meagan — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 03:07:03 +0000

That was exactly my thought. Birth rates per 1,000 women have fallen by close to half since the 50s/60s… if you’re just replacing having 4 kids where half work with two kids where both work it could make a substantial impact.

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By: Nancy Lebovitz

Nancy Lebovitz — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 16:43:55 +0000

http://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/Occupations.htm

The proportion of government-mandated managers doesn’t seem very high.

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By: JME

JME — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 16:42:18 +0000

One issue I have here is that it effectively treats “trendline growth” as a sort of acausal, inevitable process. Yes, the economy has grown fairly steadily, but all of that growth has reasons! If you were looking at the effect of, say, containerized shipping on economic growth, you could look at its introduction (in the 50s) and say “where is its effect on trendline growth?” Well, the answer is that trendline growth is the aggregation of many improvements in technologies or systems of social organization. The introduction of containerized shipping — along with many other advances — is why the trend is generally upward in the first place.

The same logic might apply — crudely — to women entering the workforce. Economic growth requires change, not just keeping on and waiting for the trendline to move up. Some of the changes might be technological, some social. It is possible that the entry of women into the work force was a reason why the upward trend continued.

(Note: I don’t want to overstate the degree to which economists actually understand economic growth or total factor productivity. There are lots of mysteries involved, and I don’t mean to definitively say that without women’s entry into the workforce growth would have dipped below the previous trend. I just think that economic growth must have some causes, and women’s entry could be one.)

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By: Sarah

Sarah — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 15:56:56 +0000

http://stats.bls.gov/mlr/1997/04/art2full.pdf

This breaks down where women entered the workforce between the 70’s and 90’s.

The biggest jump seems to be in managerial work, where the population of women almost doubled. The changes are much smaller in working-class jobs.

Managerial work, btw, does *not* include secretaries (who have been mostly female for most of the 20th century). We’re looking at marketing managers, HR managers, purchasing managers, and so on.

The stereotype of “in the 70’s, women went into HR” is not too far wrong.

There are more people in managerial jobs than there were in the 70’s. By a lot. And a lot of those new managers are women.

Is adding more managers bad for growth? Maybe. I’m going to hesitate before assuming that the people running large corporations are all idiots.

But I don’t see how hiring a bunch more people would completely fail to show up in GDP numbers unless
a.) people left the workforce
b.) prices went up by enough to push the GDP deflator up

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By: Sarah

Sarah — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 15:32:11 +0000

Not instantly, unless I’m misunderstanding.
Does the share price really drop immediately? Wouldn’t it take time for the market to learn that the new job wasn’t useful?

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