Employment patterns: a crossroad between class and gender. A long-term longitudinal study of spouses' careers in west Germany

Using longitudinal data on employment and family careers of (West) German couples and the event history methodology, we address the following questions: To which degree are spouses homogamous in terms of career resources and earnings potentials of first jobs? To what extent are moves into and out of the labor market gendered within marital unions? Are there class-specific differences in the division of labor between spouses and what changes can be observed across marriage cohorts? Contrary to the "comparative advantage" thesis of the economic theory of the family, our results show that moves between (full-time and parr-time) employment and unpaid housekeeping work are extremely gender-specific. The employment behavior of married women in Germany can thus only be understood within the household context.