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Invisible Women | Slate Star Codex

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[EDIT: Two readers – Pseudo-Erasmus and Noah Smith – have chimed in with very plausible explanations centering around labor force participation and productivity. See also my Mistakes page.] A commenter asked in yesterday’s discussion on The Two-Income Trap: why did the entry of women into the workforce produce so little effect on GDP? Here’s the graph of US women’s workforce participation: And here’s the graph of US GDP. In about 50 years – 1935 to 1985 – we went from 20% of women in the workforce to 60% of women in the workforce. Assuming a bit under 100% of men in the workforce, that’s an increase of almost 50% over the expected trend if number of women in the workforce had stayed constant. I’ve already admitted I find the fixedness of the GDP trend bizarre. But how on Earth do you unexpectedly raise the number of people in the workforce by 50% and still stick to exactly the same GDP trend? It would be like the US annexed Mexico one day but the GDP didn’t change a bit. Are we imagini

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