Women and the Economy

In a New York Times economix blog post, the author explains how women saved social security from a crisis during the last 3 decades of the twentieth century.

One of the great advances of 20th century was increased life expectancy. This advance might have bankrupted Social Security, if it were not for women in the work force.

Essentially, Social Security was set up in the 1930's based on the time period's assumptions. One of its assumptions was that the average life expectancy would remain at the age of 60. It also assumed (falsely even for that time) a nuclear family with the husband as a breadwinner and a wife as a homemaker.
Essentially, Social Security by design meant that men would go out, do the work for their households, and the government would take a certain amount of their cash and, when the man was old enough, would use that money to pay for both him and his wife. The shorter life expectancy literally means that a portion of the population would die before being eligible for social security, and the money the government took from them would be used to help others who did live longer.
Unfortunately, the designers of Social Security did not consider technological advances or higher safety standards (this was the age before seatbelts, Measles vaccines, organ transplants, and the surgeon general's warning on alcohol and cigarettes) that would up our average life expectancy to its current 78 years. With fewer people dying and more people living longer, Social Security was headed towards a huge deficit. But...

History did not quite turn out that way. In fact, millions of married women worked for pay and paid the payroll taxes as they did. This was largely profit for the Social Security system, because the system would have paid those women benefits regardless.

In spite of the June Cleaver ideal of the 1950's housewife, somewhere around a third of married women were working, and that number continued to increase steadily until the boom of the 1970's brought a majority of women, married and unmarried into the workforce. The blog entry ends:

The revenues of governments in the future will depend just as much on how women spend their time. Governments can expect more revenue if women continue significantly with their labor market progress, and less revenue if some of women’s payroll gains are reversed in the years ahead.

This entire piece essentially pointing out a very sound economic argument to insist on better pay for women. If the government continues to allow lower wages for women, it is reducing its own income, especially in terms of social security.

Women are the top consumers in the United States, married women especially, in a role that has been in place since the 19th century. Women have a huge amount of sway over certain elements of the demand curve, because they choose what they and their families buy. When thinking of economics, most people envision a bunch of middle aged, rich white men gathering around a corporate board room making all of the decisions normal people have to live with. In reality, everyone has much more of an impact on the economy than we may realize.