Is this true? Statistics say 40% of married American women are jobless?

[jennifer_bloom]

This does not mean women do not work, it might mean their husbands divorce them once the kids are old enough to live at home without constant care by the mother. I read the average marriage lasts 13-14 years.

[CalmUntilAbused]

First, I'd like to propose a correction - "they divorce their husbands" (with the following limitation potentially void, as well). Now, both forms are false to some extent, but apparently, about 69% of divorces are initiated by women, so I think the way I put it has more backing. Also... Mothers are much more likely to get full custody of the children in a Western divorce, so I don't think the idea has any real validity. It might be more about the husbands actually being willing to cut ties with their family to save more money for themselves - but the alimentary system takes care of such tendencies going too far.

Now, about the actual question... I think we've got a mix of two proper family models on our hands. The first one is the "traditional" one, with the husband providing financial support, a sense of safety and stability, while the wife takes care of household chores and children. The second one is the "modern" one, with both husband and wife working, with household chores divided equally and minimized through eating out, ordering in and a number of other similar services. Knowing the ways of the "modern" West, I'd expect less women to be jobless (or rather working as a housewife, which to my knowledge is only considered a valid occupation in Japan - and probably in some other Asian countries), so that's actually somewhat hope-inspiring. That is, unless we consider a twisted hybrid of the two proper family models (the "modern" one might be somewhat dysfunctional due to demographic concerns - taking care of children is one really gruesome chore, which is why it tends to be either avoided or minimized while neither party can devote the better part of a whole day to it - but as long as it's adopted in a responsible manner, it can still be considered a proper model). The abomination I'm talking about is the situation where the husband provides financial support and a sense of safety and stability, while the wife provides sitting on the couch and watching Netflix (okay, that might have sounded like an exaggeration, but it appears that it's not that far from the truth - with a varying level of degradation present). Now, before I get mauled (hopefully, especially given the date): I'm not saying there are no male NEETs - there are, and there might be slightly more than female ones, it's just that they don't really get married, so they don't get significant representation in these statistics (and they somewhat do get what they deserve).

While I'm 100% sure that this corrupted model does not represent the whole 40% of female joblessness, as the Western societies would be in even more of a collapse if it did - it would mean about a quarter of the population being freeloaders (or even more, including male economic freeloaders that are mostly unaccounted for in marriage-related statistics), contributing little to nothing to the national economy (now, it's important to note that housewives do contribute to the national economy - not only do they contribute to its future through demographic means, but they also provide a healthy living atmosphere for their husbands, increasing their vitality, their motivation and thus, their productivity) - I'm positive it can represent as much as about half of that value, bringing the ratio of actually jobless married women down to about 20% (or even less, considering that some women would be looking for a job - they just can't really land one). All in all... Yeah, I think 40% of married women's joblessness is an exaggeration.

[Avicenna]

I doubt that figure is an accurate unemployment figure. Now as an employment rate, it might be accurate because the current employment rate is around 60% for all adults.