i enrolled at brown fully planning to attend graduate school and have a career, as did many of my classmates in the class of 1967. by the 1970s, a dramatic change in women ’ s work lives was under way. in the period after world war ii, many women had not expected that they would spend as much of their adult lives working as turned out to be the case. by contrast, in the 1970s young women more commonly expected that they would spend a substantial portion of their lives in the labor force, and they prepared for it, increasing their educational attainment and taking courses and college majors that better equipped them for careers as opposed to just jobs. in surveys of young people about their expectations of their futures, young women during this era increasingly placed an emphasis on career success. 11 susan graber slusky of the class of 1971 said in her oral history that she chose pembroke for brown ’ s excellence in chemistry and physics, because she was already planning the career she went on to have as a researcher. perhaps unsurprisingly, this is also the period in which many all - male colleges admitted women or combined their women ’ s and men ’ s undergraduate schools, as brown did when it merged pembroke and brown college in 1971. these changes in attitudes and expectations were supported by other changes under way in society. workplace protections were enhanced through the passage of the pregnancy discrimination act in 1978 and the recognition of sexual harassment in the interestingly, over this time young men put increasing weight on family. goldin ( 2006 ), pp. 9 and 11. - 8workplace. access to birth control increased, which allowed married couples greater control over the size of their families and young women the ability to delay marriage and to plan children around their educational and work choices. 12 and in 1974, women gained, for the first time, the right to apply for credit in their own name without a male co - signer. 13 by the early 1990s, the labor force participation rate of prime working - age women - - those between the ages of 25 and 54 - - reached just over 74 percent, compared with roughly 93 percent for prime working - age men. by then, the share of women going into the traditional fields of teaching, nursing, social work, and clerical work declined, and more women were becoming doctors, lawyers, managers, and, yes, professors. as women increased their education and joined industries and occupations formerly dominated by men, the gap in earnings between women and men

university of wisconsin despite an enviable body of research. she married another wisconsin professor, an eminent chemist, and collaborated with him on his research. but, in 1954, she gave up her assistant professorship, she said, to be able to kessler - harris ( 1982 ), pp. 184 - 85. kessler - harris ( 1982 ), pp. 250 - 58. kessler - harris ( 1982 ), pp. 286 - 87. - 10 accompany her husband on his frequent international travels. betty later moved with her husband to california, and after his death, she endowed a graduate fellowship in the sciences and a prize in theoretical chemistry. although betty ’ s accomplishments were considerable, against the backdrop of increasing opportunity for women over her lifetime i believe that betty stafford hirschfelder was denied opportunities and greater success simply because she was a woman. despite the fears of some that women entering into the workforce would crowd out men, the evidence shows that the rise in women ’ s participation has contributed to widespread improvements in the safety and productivity of our workplaces, to the health of families, and to the macroeconomic success that our country has enjoyed over the past 125 years. in the first decades of the 20th century, the struggle to improve the working conditions of young women drawn into factories was a pillar of the overall movement toward improved labor standards. women ’ s demands for safer factories, humane workweeks, and higher pay, which were often pursued through organizing and striking, contributed substantially to the social upheaval and public debate of that period that eventually led to the passage of stronger labor standards. these efforts also produced generations of women who went on to be leaders in the broader labor movement and in the broader movements for equality. the rise in female labor force participation was an early focus of and helped establish the fields of statistics and labor economics in their modern incarnations. carroll wright, the first commissioner of what is now known as the bureau of labor statistics and who established the high standards for data collection and analysis for which the - 11 bureau is known, devoted his agency ’ s fourth annual report, for the year 1888, to the topic of working women in large cities. 18 moreover, the issues surrounding women ’ s work, such as the minimum wage, pay equity, and maximum workweeks, were topics of great interest to early practitioners of labor economics. 19 it is often said that we should welcome women ’ s presence in the workplace because it allows us to capitalize on the talents