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High-Powered Careers and Marriage: Can Women Have It All?

Author

Listed:
  • Dessy Sylvain

    (Université Laval and CIRPÉE)

  • Djebbari Habiba

    (Université Laval, IZA and CIRPÉE)

Abstract

Why do women often choose family over career? Can't they, like men, have both? At work, women are still under-represented in high-powered professions in most societies. At home, women tend to devote more time to their families than their spouses do. What explains these imbalances? Our model builds upon the fact that women's fertility, unlike men's, declines sharply past age 35. As a result, women may prefer marrying early in order to secure a match rather than investing in their careers while delaying and potentially missing out on marriage. Women's failure to coordinate towards delaying marriage may explain the imbalances within the family and in the labor market.

Suggested Citation

  • Dessy Sylvain & Djebbari Habiba, 2010. "High-Powered Careers and Marriage: Can Women Have It All?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-33, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:10:y:2010:i:1:n:42
    DOI: 10.2202/1935-1682.2358
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    Cited by:

    1. Maggian, Valeria & Montinari, Natalia & Nicolò, Antonio, 2020. "Do quotas help women to climb the career ladder? A laboratory experiment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    2. Hanzhe Zhang, 2021. "An Investment-and-Marriage Model with Differential Fecundity: On the College Gender Gap," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(5), pages 1464-1486.
    3. Valeria Maggian & Antonio Nicolò, 2016. "The wrong man for the job: biased beliefs and job mismatching," Post-Print halshs-01324733, HAL.
    4. Gershoni, Naomi & Low, Corinne, 2021. "The power of time: The impact of free IVF on Women’s human capital investments," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    5. Zhang, Lin, 2022. "Age matters for girls: School entry age and female graduate education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    6. Zhang, Hanzhe, 2019. "An Investment-and-Marriage Model with Differential Fecundity," Working Papers 2019-11, Michigan State University, Department of Economics.

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