Premise
In the United States, women have been replacing men in the workforce, or rather were from sometime prior to 1976 until the mid-90's. (The general upward trend is from the recent recession, sorry, I'm recycling a graph from another presentation).
Presumably, this occurred when a more qualified woman got a job over a male counterpart as women entered the workforce.
Given that, one would expect the economy to grow substantially as overall productivity rose.
Yet US GDP growth did not appear to outpace the world over that period, since not all the world liberalized their gender roles simultaneously.
Question
Why is that?
Is there a flaw in the reasoning, or were the effects simply not visible at the scale I've looked because the data was too volatile or confounded by external factors.
I'd be interested in any studies that dealt with this topic and offered potential causal mechanisms for breaking the presumed link between (again, the presumed) increased efficiency, and output growth.
Thanks!
Sources:
- LNS10000001 - Civilian noninstitutional population, male
- LNS11000001 - Civilian labor force, male
- LNS10000002 - Civilian noninstitutional population, female
- LNS11000002 - Civilian labor force, female