Entries and Exits in the Work Trajectory of Mexican Women of Two Generations

Nina Castro, El Colegio de México

Sociodemographic research in Mexico has documented the increasing of female economic participation rates since 1965 and has pointed out the intermittences and discontinuities that appear along the work trajectories. The objective of this research is to show the structure of the female work trajectories as well as the inter-cohort and intra-cohort differences between two birth cohorts of women (30's and 50's). I study the entries and the exits of the female labor force and their sequence in the women work career. I used the biographic data that recompiled the Retrospective Demographic Survey (EDER, 1998) in Mexico. The methodology includes the statistical technique known as sequence analysis. Using the life course framework as theoretical approximation I found a typology that includes the women’s work careers. The trajectories with few entries of short duration and the trajectories with few entries of large duration appear to be the most important in the analysis.