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Comment by devmunchies | Hacker News Reader

Women joining the workforce increased the labor supply which decreased wages on the whole. This makes it so many women HAVE to work as opposed to GET to work. A double income for many families is required nowadays.

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17876875.

At the same time, it's also given women the ability to survive and exist in society without requiring them to be married or otherwise supported by a man.

By giving up more freedom and time and being dependent on an employer? I think women should have the option, but my argument was that the option is no longer there, they HAVE to work now.

Being reliant on being married is NOT more freedom.

If that is your argument, I would say men have done a commendable job. They supported women for centuries while building a society that would eventually let women not be dependent on men.

They never needed to be dependent in the first place. We're probably centuries behind where we could have been if half the population had been allowed to contribute from the start.

We are centuries behind because we do not embrace the beauty of dimorphism. One sex complements the other. This is not a war for supremacy.

> This is not a war for supremacy

Tell that to generations of men that have used violence to stay on top. Hard not to consider it a war when it looks, talks, and walks like a duck.

A very few powerful men have been abusing other men for generations too. Women in such powerful families were no less abusive. Why are we ignoring the suffering of men?

Yes, great job, men! Seriously, is that comment supposed to be a joke or are you one of those red-pillers?

My point is: I'm not sure "supported" is quite the right word.

Why would it be a joke? Are you one of those man-haters?

Because it takes a very special type of daftness to think for centuries men were "supporting" women by not allowing them to work.

This world is built upon the dead bodies of men. Men who fought wars to protect their kin, men who fell from the top of buildings they were constructing, men who suffocated to death deep in the tunnels, or drowned in the ocean...

Let us not forget them. Let us not belittle their sacrifices.

I don't quite understand this. Many women worked in the fields, or at home, or giving birth. They suffered, I'm sure, just as much.

Haha. You know it was men who started all of those wars, right?

I absolutely would not suggest men have done a commendable job, because for much of that time women were basically treated as property.

That is a myopic view of history.

Women joining the workforce lead to a long term decrease in the labor supply. The only reason wages haven’t gone up is a massive influx of foreign born workers that keeps supply high.

... because they were not home having babies?

...that does sound like a long-term decrease in the labor supply?

please not that this is not a rhetorical question on my part. down voting statements looking for more information/ clarification seems out of place here

From what I've read the birth rate has long been on a gradual decline as wealth has increased. That there was no sudden drop when women went back to work, just a continuation of the trend.

That doesn't appear to be true. Birth rates plummeted in the 60s and 70s[1], which is when women started to really join the work force in quantity.

Perhaps the people inclined to down vote think I'm advocating for banning women from work? Please realize I'm saying no such thing, I'm simply pointing out an obvious consequence for long term labor supply that simple reasoning can deduce and the data bears out.

[1]http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/18/is-u-s-ferti...

Lower birthrates could as easily be attributed to lower infant mortality catching up to a new generation

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/figures/m4838a2f1....

The decrease in births is twice the decrease in infant mortality according to the sources we both linked. Also, it takes at least a generation before lowering infant mortality lowers birth rates. It does look like lowered infant mortality contributed quite a bit to the baby boom.

Anticonceptional techniques are IMHO the game changer. Humans have always tried to limit their offspring. Once it was possible without extreme measures, parents prefer to pour more resources on fewer kids.

My wife haven't worked out a single day in life, and haven't ever taken a single anticonceptional pill, either. The only thing we agreed without discussion in our marriage was having a single kid. I went to vasectomy the month after my son was born.

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