Work, work, work

This piece has drawn my attention to an Economist piece, which I shall now read, about women in the workforce. I’m intrigued by this quote:

But few are cheering. This is partly because young women take their opportunities for granted. It is partly because for many women work represents economic necessity rather than liberation. The rich world’s growing army of single mothers have little choice but to work. A growing proportion of married women have also discovered that the only way they can preserve their households’ living standards is to join their husbands in the labour market. In America families with stay-at-home wives have the same inflation-adjusted income as similar families did in the early 1970s…

All these things are played as choices, which is fine, except that in some cases, I don’t believe many of the family/work choices are freely made, after all.

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