View article

Since the 1970s the global economy has been in an era of market regulation and growing labor market flexibility, in which new technologies, new labor control systems and reformed forms of work organization have transformed patterns of labor force participation throughout the world. In the process, the turn of the century will mark the end of the century of the laboring man in a literal and real sense, in that women will account for almost as many of the``jobs''as men.

This paper is a``revisit''to ideas and data presented in a paper written in 1988. 2 The main hypothesis of that paper was that the changing character of labor markets around the world had been leading to a rise in female labor force participation and a relative if not absolute fall in men's employment, as well as a``feminization''of many jobs traditionally held by men.