TY  - JOUR
AU  - Goldin,Claudia
TI  - Marriage Bars:  Discrimination Against Married Women Workers, 1920's to 1950's
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 2747
PY  - 1988
Y2  - October 1988
DO  - 10.3386/w2747
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2747
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2747.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Claudia Goldin
Department of Economics
229 Littauer
Harvard University
Cambridge MA 02138
Tel: 617/613-1200
Fax: 617/613-1245
E-Mail: cgoldin@harvard.edu
AB  - Modern personnel practices, social consensus, and the Depression acted in concert to delay the emergence of married women in the American economy through an institution known as the "marriage bar." Marriage bars were policies adopted by firms and local school boards, from about the early 1900's to 1950, to fire single women when they married and not to hire married women. I explore their determinants using firm-level data from 1931 and 1940 and find they are associated with promotion from within, tenure-based salaries, and other modern personnel practices. The marriage bar, which had at its height affected 751 of all local school boards and more than 50% of all office workers, was virtually abandoned in the 1950's when the cost of limiting labor supply greatly increased.
ER  -