In the contentious debate about women and work, conventional wisdom holds that middle-class women can decide if they … work, while working-class women need to work. Yet, even after the recent economic crisis, middle-class women are more … likely to work than working-class women. Sarah Damaske deflates the myth that financial needs dictate if women work …

reveals how the pay gap widens further down the line in women's careers, about 10 to 15 years out, as opposed to those … beginning careers after college. She examines five distinct groups of women over the course of the twentieth century: cohorts of … women who differ in terms of career, job, marriage, and children, in approximated years of graduation-1900s, 1920s, 1950s …