ABSTRACT
As well as providing different employment predictions, these hypotheses have been associated with different theoretical perspectives on women’s employment. The flexible reserve hypothesis is associated with human capital labour market theories including some dual labour market theories (Doeringer and Piore, 1971); lower human capital endowments, and in particular lower levels of job-specific skills reduce the incentive for firms to hoard women workers in a downturn (Oi, 1962). This tendency for women to be displaced from jobs where they are currently employed is only one part of the ‘buffer’ mechanism. In addition women voluntarily withdraw or, under the ‘discouraged worker’ hypothesis, fail to re-enter the labour market because their labour supply decisions are influenced by the overall level of labour demand. (Mincer, 1962; Bowen and Finegan, 1969). Some Marxist theorists have also identified an incentive for capital to displace women from the labour market: to supplement declining real wages of the breadwinner through domestic labour (see review of debate by Himmelweit and Mohun, 1977), or to minimise political and social responses to unemployment.
