4.3.2 Longer-term trends
Table 2 shows a longer-term series of labour force participation, going back to the 1951 Census. By necessity, this series uses the pre-1986 Census definition of full-time participation which counted people who were working for 20 or more hours a week. This series shows that the trend of increasing women’s participation and decreasing men’s participation extends back to the Second World War. The exception, for women, is in the 15-24 year age group, where participation has fallen markedly because of increased schooling and post-school education.[14]
| 15-19 | 20-24 | 25-34 | 35-44 | 45-54 | 55-64 | 15-64 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Women | |||||||
| 1951 | 64.6 | 52.8 | 22.5 | 20.7 | 21.0 | 12.2 | 28.4 |
| 1961 | 64.1 | 49.8 | 20.9 | 25.4 | 28.7 | 17.8 | 31.8 |
| 1971 | 56.9 | 54.9 | 29.5 | 37.5 | 37.7 | 21.9 | 38.9 |
| 1981 | 49.5 | 63.7 | 41.1 | 51.9 | 48.6 | 22.3 | 45.8 |
| 1991 | 35.7 | 63.6 | 51.3 | 60.5 | 60.0 | 23.4 | 50.7 |
| 2001 | 32.1 | 59.0 | 59.7 | 61.7 | 68.0 | 41.9 | 56.4 |
| Men | |||||||
| 1951 | 71.5 | 95.9 | 97.8 | 97.6 | 95.6 | 75.4 | 91.3 |
| 1961 | 65.5 | 94.6 | 98.5 | 98.3 | 97.3 | 81.7 | 91.1 |
| 1971 | 57.1 | 91.0 | 98.2 | 98.7 | 97.2 | 81.6 | 88.5 |
| 1981 | 56.6 | 91.0 | 97.1 | 97.6 | 96.1 | 69.9 | 86.2 |
| 1991 | 40.1 | 78.0 | 86.7 | 89.2 | 87.6 | 52.4 | 75.8 |
| 2001 | 39.1 | 72.6 | 85.3 | 87.3 | 86.2 | 69.4 | 77.2 |
The labour force here consists of people employed for 20 or more hours a week, plus people who were ‘seeking work’ (1951-1981) or ‘actively seeking work’ (1991 and 2001).
Source: Statistics New Zealand, Census documents 1951-2001.
The 1951-2001 series can also be used to track the participation of different cohorts of women as this is measured in successive Censuses (Figure 6). At all ages, apart from the 15-24 age group, women in more recent cohorts have had higher participation rates than their predecessors. The dip in participation amongst 25-34 year olds has also become less marked with each successive cohort.
- Figure 6 – Participation of successive cohorts of women
-
- Source: Census documents 1951-2001.
The massive increase in women’s labour force participation since the Second World War has been a phenomenon in almost all developed economies (Jacobsen 1999). Some of the reasons given for this increase include:
- demand for labour causing the real wages of women to rise, therefore making it more worthwhile for women to work,
- changes in industrial composition (eg the rise of the clerical sector and the decline of agriculture and labouring),
- a growing number of part-time jobs, and their increased availability in a range of different occupations,
- technological advances making household work more efficient, and also producing goods (such as TVs) that cannot be produced at home,
- an increase in the schooling and post-school education of women,
- changes in family composition, due to factors such as an increase in divorces, delayed childbearing, smaller families, and an increase in the proportion of women not having children,
- changing conditions of work, and
- changing cultural and legal attitudes towards women at work.
Notes
- [14]Longer-term series of women’s labour force participation, although not age-specific series, are also presented in Hyman (1978), Horsfield (1988), Davies and Jackson (1993) and Revell and Brosnan (1986).
