In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

c h a p t e r 1 1 Conclusions and a Look to the Future does gender matter? Whether or not it is an issue for American Jewish men and women, gender continues to differentiate them in terms of their family behavior , labor force participation, occupational achievement and rewards, expressions and strength of Jewish identity, and the extent to which their Jewish identity affects their family and economic behavior. Although both American Jewish men and women are distinguished by high educational and occupational achievement compared with their counterparts in the broader U.S. society, they have not achieved gender equality, and in some ways there is even more inequality among them than among their less educated counterparts in the broader society. With regard to gender inequality in secular achievement, finding that American Jews have not achieved gender equality is important because in many ways American Jews embody the best chances for gender equality among all subgroups in the United States. In a subpopulation where nearly 90% of the women have the same education as their male counterparts, and nearly 60% of both men and women have at least an undergraduate college degree, one would expect similarity in labor force participation and occupational achievement. And American Jewish women do have high labor force participation rates and occupational achievement. Family roles should not pose as great an obstacle to occupational achievement as they do in the broader population, because American Jews tend to have smaller families on average. But perhaps in keeping with the cultural heritage of familism , American Jewish women tend to respond to family size—not necessarily by dropping out of the labor force (as they used to, according to Chiswick, 1986) but by curtailing their hours of employment. In fact, college-educated Jewish women with children are less likely to be employed 253 254 conclusions full time than are less educated Jewish women with children under 18 at home. Jewish mothers respond in this way much more commonly than their husbands, placing them in the role of “secondary earner.” Marriage facilitates this pattern, as Jewish mothers who are not currently married are more likely than married Jewish women to be employed full time. This pattern of being a “secondary earner” undoubtedly contributes to the lower occupational achievement of Jewish women compared with Jewish men. Their occupations are not less prestigious, but they earn less income. The disparity between men’s and women’s earnings is quite large, even when education and hours of employment are held constant. As is the case in the broader population, the disparity is greater among those with a college education , and because so large a percentage of the American Jewish population is college educated, the gender gap in income is greater than in the overall population. This lower income results in part from the differential occupations of men and women, common also in the broader population; but also contributing to an income gap may be a history of less career commitment , characterized by periods of part-time employment. Perhaps this gender differentiation facilitates a division of labor within the family that entails commitment to the family coupled with many hours and much energy devoted to career. But it may be the norm because alternatives are too costly, especially when the supportive infrastructure makes it too challenging to arrange the division of labor differently. That is, unless men’s and women’s jobs truly provide equal rewards (income) for equal human capital, the value of most men’s and women’s family and economic time will not be considered equal (see also Chiswick, 2008, ch. 6). From the income data that we analyzed (although incomplete), it is apparent that American Jewish women are no better off than their counterparts in the broader society, and sometimes are even worse off, in terms of their income compared with that of American Jewish men in similar occupations. Furthermore , unless childcare for young children is provided at a reasonable cost, one parent is likely to remain home with a young child for at least some period of time; whose career is interrupted will be related to the respective values of each adult’s time in the labor force versus time with the family—more often than not, it is the mother’s career. So the economic conditions of the U.S. labor force reinforce a traditional familism that perpetuates a long-standing Jewish tradition: Jewish wives and mothers are the ones who scale back their careers for the...

Share