Scholars regard the relatively large numbers of women in low-skilled jobs (the so called "genderization of jobs") as contributing toward male-female wage inequality. This phenomenon has motivated a number of questions. Why do female workers crowd into low skilled jobs? Has the rate of growth of education/skill for female workers not kept pace with female labor force participation (FLFP)? Or could it be that the FLFP, among skilled women, increased at a rate that is higher than the rate of growth of jobs in the skilled sector? With these questions in mind we examine the relationship between the type of skill required by an industry and FLFP at both national and regional (census regions) level. Following harmonized industry codes from the US census, we rank-order three-digit US industries into ten groups by median wages. Group 1 (10) includes all the 3-digit SIC industries with lowest (highest) median wages and accounting for 10 percent of female employment. We then estimate the labor force participation of all working women aged 16+ by using CPS data (for 70s, 80s and 90s) in the ordered logit as follows:
LFP is an ordered discrete variable which can take any integer value within the range of 1 and 9. Edu is the years of education of the worker, Ms is the marital status, Nc is the number of children under age 5, Sm is the proportion of skilled male workers in the industry group and Um is the proportion of unskilled men in the industry group. The study is expected to show how skill level of employment choice is affected by education or human capital, and other individual or family characteristics or locational factors.