◎黃裕美 輯譯

Across the country, women in their prime earning years, struggling with an unfriendly economy, are retreating from the work force, either perma-nently or for long stretches.

在全美各地，正值賺錢黃金年代的婦女正與不利的經濟環境抗爭，她們退出勞動人口，不管是暫時或長期性的。

They had piled into jobs in grow-ing numbers since the 1960s. But that stopped happening this decade, and as the nearly seven-year-old recovery gives way to hard times, the retreat is likely to accelerate. Indeed, for the first time since the women's move-ment came to life, an economic re-covery has come and gone, and the percentage of women at work has fallen, not risen, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Each of the seven previous recoveries since 1960 ended with a greater percentage of women at work than when it began.

1960年代以來，女性競相投入職場，但這10年來已不再發生。而當將近7年的經濟復甦，被荒時暴月取代，這股退潮可能加速進行。的確，據美國勞工統計局報告，自從女性平權運動誕生以來，這是第一次經濟復甦來了又走，在職婦女的比率走下坡而不是上揚。自1960年以來前面七次經濟復甦，結果都促成女性就業比率比復甦前增加。

When economists first started noticing this trend two or three years ago, many suggested that the pullback from paid employment was a matter of the women themselves deciding to stay home — to raise children or be-cause their husbands were doing well or because, more than men, they felt committed to running their house-holds. But now, a different explana-tion is turning up in government data, in the research of a few economists and in a Congressional study that fol-lows the women's story through the end of 2007.

當經濟學家兩三年前第一次開始注意到這股趨勢時，很多人認為，對女人來說，退出帶薪工作，主要是因為她們自己決定留在家裡帶小孩，或因為她們的丈夫表現優異，或因為女人比男人對管理家務更投入。但現在不管是政府的資料，某些經濟學家的研究，及一項國會研究報告，追蹤調查婦女到去年底為止的資料，都出現一個完全不同的解釋。

After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourc-ing, stagnant wages or the discourag-ing prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for a while. "When we saw women starting to drop out in the early part of this decade, we thought it was the moth-erhood movement, women staying home to raise their kids," Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which did the Congres-sional study, said in an interview. "We did not think it was the econo-my, but when we looked into it, we realized that it was."

幾乎不管進入哪個行業，女性大半會遭遇和男人一樣的困擾：經濟衰退、裁員、委外代工、薪資凍結或立即減薪等令人洩氣沮喪的前景。而女人的反應也和男人一樣，退出職場或消失一陣子。「2000年代初，當我們看到女人開始離開職場時，還以為出現了母性運動，女人想留在家裡相夫教子，」國會聯合經濟委員會資深經濟學家鮑施伊在一項訪談中說，他也是國會這項研究的負責人。「我們沒看出來是經濟問題，但經我們深入調查才發覺是經濟因素作祟。」

Hard times in manufacturing cer-tainly sidelined Tootie Samson of Baxter, Iowa. Nine months after she lost her job on a factory assembly line, Ms. Samson, 48, is still not working. She could be. Jobs that pay $8 or $9 an hour are easy enough to land. But like the men with whom she worked at the Maytag washing machine fac-tory, now closed, she resists going back to work at less than half her old wage. Ms. Samson knows she will have to get another job at some point. She and her husband still have a teenage daughter to put through col-lege, and his income as a truck driver is not enough. So Ms. Samson, now receiving unemployment benefits, is going to college full time — leaving the work force for more than two years — hoping that a bachelor's de-gree will enable her to earn at least her old wage of $20 an hour.

製造業度小月自然使愛阿華州巴克斯特的圖娣．山森被迫退出職場。在丟了一家工廠裝配線的工作九個月後，48歲的山森女士還是沒有工作。她是可以屈就。時薪八、九塊錢的零工不難找，但一如在現已關廠的美泰克洗衣機製造廠工作的那些男人，她不願再回去幹時薪不到原來一半的活兒。山森女士心裡有數，她遲早得找另一份工作。她們夫婦還有個十來歲的女兒要上大學，她老公當卡車司機的收入絕對不夠。目前在領失業補助的山森女士，在離開職場兩年多之後，現在準備全時上大學，她希望大學學位可以使她至少賺到過去20美元時薪的工資水平。

"A lot of women I know, all they did was work at the Maytag factory," said Ms. Samson, who joined May-tag's assembly line 11 years ago. "They can't find another job like it and they deal with this loss by drop-ping out."

「我認識很多女人，她們一直在美泰克廠幹活，」山森女士說，她是在11年前投入美泰克的裝配線。「她們找不到像原來的工作，面對這個虧損，她們只好退出職場。」

The Joint Economic Committee study cites the growing statistical evi-dence that women are leaving the work force "on a par with men," and the potentially disastrous consequences for families. "Women bring home about one-third of family income," said Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York and vice chairman of the Joint Economic Committee. "And only those families with a working wife have seen real improvement in their living standards."

國會聯合經濟委員會的研究引述愈來愈多統計數據證明，女性離職的比率和「男人相當」，並指出可能對家庭造成災難性的後果。「女性薪資大概占家庭收入的三分之一，」聯合經濟委員會紐約民主黨籍的副主席卡洛琳．馬洛尼說。「只有那些妻子有工作的家庭，他們的生活水平才真正獲得改善。」

The proportion of women holding jobs in their prime working years, 25 to 54, peaked at 74.9 percent in early 2000 as the technology investment bubble was about to burst. Eight years later, in June, it was 72.7 percent, a seemingly small decline, but those 2.2 percentage points erase more than 12 years of gains for women. Four mil-lion more in their prime years would be employed today if the old pattern had prevailed through the expansion now ending.

在25到54歲這個黃金工作年代，女人就業率在2000年代初達到74.9%的最高峰，當時科技投資泡沫即將破滅。八年後的今天，六月婦女就業率跌到72.7%，幅度似乎很小，但這跌掉的2.2個百分點，已經一舉抹煞婦女12年來的成長。如果照過去的模式推估，在這次景氣擴張結束後，應該又有400萬婦女今天會投入職場。

The pattern is roughly similar a-mong the well-educated and the less educated, among the married and never married, among mothers with teenage children and those with chil-dren under 6, and among white women and black. The women, in sum, are for the first time withdraw-ing from work with the same unifor-mity as men in their prime working years. Ninety-six percent of the men held jobs in 1953, their peak year. That is down to 86.4 percent today.

不管教育程度高低，已婚或未婚，子女已經十來歲或不到六歲的媽媽，及白種和黑種女人，婦女就業率下跌的模式相去不遠。總而言之，女性首次在退出職場時和黃金工作年代的男人出現一致性。1953年有96%男人就業，那是有史以來最高的一年。今天也跌到86.4%。

The biggest retreat has been in manufacturing, where more than one million women have disappeared from payrolls since 2001. Like men, many have not returned to jobs in other sectors.

最大的退職潮出現在製造業，有一百多萬名婦女自2001年以來就從薪水帳冊上消失，就像男人，很多人並未到其他部門重回職場。

Pay is no longer rising smartly for women in the key 25-to-54 age group. Just the opposite, the median pay has fallen in recent years, to $14.84 an hour in 2007 from $15.04 in 2004, adjusted for inflation, according to the Economic Policy Institute.Wage stagnation often discourages them from pursuing new jobs, says Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard. "While pay was rising solid-ly in the 1990s, you had women continuing to move into the work force," he said.

25到54歲年齡層的婦女收入再也不見大幅擴增。據經濟政策研究所指出，相反的，近幾年，經通膨調整後，婦女中位數收入到2007年跌到只剩時薪14.84 美元，2004年還有15.04美元。哈佛大學勞工經濟學家卡茲說，薪資凍結往往使婦女不願再找新的工作。他說：「1990年代，薪資穩定成長時，女性持續投入職場。」

（取材自紐約時報）