Stretched to Limit, Women Stall March to Work

For four decades, the number of women entering the workplace grew at a raging pace, giving way to a powerful cultural and economic transformation in America. A broad set of both social and economic forces pushed women into the work force. After the 1960’s, women flooded into higher education and started marrying later. But since the mid-1990's, the growth in the percentage of adult women working has plateaued, even falling somewhat in the last five years and leaving it at a rate under that of men. In this article, the author asserts that this is not because of a change in attitudes, but that “the broad reconfiguration of women’s lives that allowed most of them to pursue jobs outside the home appears to be hitting some serious limits.” For participation rates of women to rise significantly, mothers will need to give up more of the household burden in order to allocate more time to work and their career.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/02/business/02work.html?pagewanted=all