The Availability of Women Workers : Effects on Company Location Book

This book examines the role that women workers play in drawing companies from central cities to suburban locations. Movement of jobs from cities to suburbs has meant a substantial loss of jobs for central-city residents, decreased tax revenues for central city services, a population shift from the central city to the suburbs as people follow jobs, and increased demands for highways and other infrastructure.
Some studies have argued that firms are increasingly drawn to the suburbs to tap a supply of white, second-earner women with good basic skills. This book is the first to use both a statistical model of intra-metropolitan firm location and a survey of firms to establish the importance of female labor to firms' decisions to choose suburban sites. The study finds that the availability of such workers does influence firms to choose the suburbs.
(Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1995; revised with new preface)