The word is in: the Opt-Out Revolution, if there ever was such a thing, can be officially declared over. Women now make up more than half the workforce -up from 33 percent in 1967.
So what was all that "mommy wars" arguing about whether women should stay home or work for pay? It's hard to believe it now, as our nation struggles with the most profound economic downturn in 30 years, but back at the oh-so-flush years at the dawn of the decade, well-educated and highly compensated women were reported to be trading the corner office for the minivan. Their defection from the workplace, according to a much-discussed 2003 story in the New York Times Magazine, was interpreted to be a sign that after 40 years of gains, women were becoming disillusioned with corporate America.
After much soul searching, high-power women lawyers and MBAs, the ones at the very top of the economic food chain, were supposedly "opting out" in favor of more traditional women's responsibilities like running a household and raising—or at least supervising the raising—of their children, which in turn triggered the publication of a spate of books praising women who chose full-time mommying or alternately chastising them as wasting their education and putting their family's economic future at risk.
It turns out the "Opt-Out Revolution" was a just tiny blip in the census data. According to a report out this week by the Center for American Progress and Maria Shriver, women aren't just working—a full 63 percent have become at least one of the economic pillars on which their family's survival rests, and 39 percent of working women say they are the primary breadwinners.
