The Gender Revolution in Israel: Progress and Stagnation

In most aspects, gender inequality in the labor market has declined over the past century in all Western societies (Esping-Andersen, 2009). Empirical evidence for this trend is most widely documented in the United States, especially between 1970 and 2000, the period when by almost all accounts the gender revolution was most dramatic (Blau and Kahn, 1994, 1997; Cotter et al., 2004; England, 2010). Between 1970 and 2000, the gender gap in labor force participation rates has substantially decreased, and the convergence between mothers and nonmothers was even greater (Cotter, Hermsen, and Vanneman, 2004). During the 1970s alone, the share of young American women with a college education grew by 150 percent (Morris and Western, 1999), a trend that gained momentum during the 1980s and 1990s. By the end of the 1980s, American women were acquiring most of the bachelor and master’s degrees (Cotter, Hermsen, and Vanneman, 2004; Morris and Western, 1999; DiPrete and Buchmann, 2013). These numeric changes were followed by an increase in women’s representation in fields of study that traditionally were dominated by men, such as medicine, business, and management (Cotter et al., 2004; DiPrete and Buchmann, 2013). The growth in educational attainments of women came in parallel to the legislation of antidiscrimination laws and in the wake of the second-wave of feminism during the 1960s. These two processes contributed to mitigating practices of discrimination and helped women translate their education into occupational and economic attainments within the labor market.