8.4 How Work Perpetuates Gender Stratification

LO 8.4: Explain how gendered work organizations uphold gender stratification.

A macrosociological lens focuses on large-scale trends, such how gender stratification can be seen throughout work and the economy. For instance, the labor force participation rate differs for men and women. The labor force participation rate compares the percentage of working-age people (16 or older) who are employed or actively seeking work to the overall size of the population, excluding those in the military, living in a nursing home, or incarcerated. In other words, how many people who could be employed are employed?

A larger share of men is in the labor force than women (see Figure 8.4). Labor force participation among people aged 20 and older has declined overall since 2008. Part of this decline is because a larger portion of the U.S. population is older and retired from work. The labor force participation rate had started to rebound from the 2008 recession when the COVID-19 pandemic began. Still, the COVID-19 pandemic set women’s employment back to its 1987 rate, and it remains to be seen when their share of the workforce will rebound (see Chapter 2) (Jones, 2021). In 2024, the men’s labor force participation rate was 70.5%, and the women’s rate was 58.7%.

One reason for the gender gap in labor force participation is that women do more child and elder care compared to men. U.S. women spend 60% more time on unpaid care for children and older adults compared to men (Ortiz-Ospina et al., 2018). Another factor is the lack of public spending on family benefits, such as government-funded childcare. In 2019, the United States spent 1.04% of its gross domestic product on family benefits, compared to Canada’s 1.87% (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2023). Gross domestic product (GDP) is the market value of all goods and services produced over a given period in a nation, usually a year.

Canada’s labor force participation rate for women was 4% higher than in the United States (Ortiz-Ospina et al., 2018). The Canadian case is instructive because it shows a positive correlation between public family benefits and the number of employed women. In other words, Canada spends more to support employed parents. As a result, more women are employed compared to the United States, which spends less on family needs, such as childcare.