拥有一切？新兴经济体中受过大学教育的女性的职业和家庭

To Have It All? Career and Family of College-Educated Womenin an Emerging EconomyPublic Disclosure Authorized Elghafiky BimardhikaDaniel Halim East Asia and the Pacific Region &Gender Global DepartmentMarch 2026 A verified reproducibility package for this paper isavailable athttp://reproducibility.worldbank.org,clickherefor direct access. Policy Research Working Paper11326 Abstract Can college-educated women in rapidly developing econ-omies balance career and family, or does compressedeconomicgrowth polarize their choices?This paperinvestigates how Indonesian women navigate these dualobjectives across birth cohorts from the 1950s to the 1990s.It utilizes 38 years of Labor Force Survey data to examineaggregate cohort patterns and five rounds of IndonesiaFamily Life Survey panel data to trace individual life-cycletrajectories. The paper documents increasing polarizationamong younger cohorts, which either delay marriage and stay in the labor force or opt out of the labor force alto-gether post-marriage. The paper traces this divergence totwo concurrent trends. First, more women enter time-de-manding, high-skilled professions traditionally dominatedby men. Second, rising conservatism among young mencreates marriage market frictions, leaving educated womenwith stark choices: conform to conservative family expecta-tions by leaving work, or prioritize careers while delayingor forgoing family. This paper is a product of the Office of the Chief Economist, East Asia and the Pacific Region and the Gender GlobalDepartment. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contributionto development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. The authors may be contacted at dhalim@worldbank.org. A verified reproducibility packagefor this paper is available athttp://reproducibility.worldbank.org, clickherefor direct access. The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about developmentissues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry thenames of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely thoseof the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank andits affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. To Have It All? Career and Family of College-Educated Women in an Emerging Economy* Keywords: college graduates, female employment, marriage, Indonesia. JEL codes: J12, J16, J22, J24, O15. 1.Introduction Rapid economic growth after World War II ushered in a new era of profoundsocioeconomic changes and considerable structural transformations. Yet, despite massiveimprovements in human capital (World Bank, 2018; Evans and Yuan, 2022), female laborforce participation (FLFP) in low- and middle-income countries remains puzzlingly stagnant.Goldin’s influential U-shaped hypothesis (1994)—derived from cross-country comparisons—suggests that female labor force participation would initially decline before rising at higherdevelopment levels. However, recent empirical studies challenge this trajectory. Panelanalyses reveal that the U-shaped pattern does not hold longitudinally (Gaddis andKlasen, 2014; Klasen, 2019), leading researchers to conclude that “gender equality is nota corollary of economic growth” (Agte et al., 2024). A growing literature highlights how family formation decisions mediate female laborsupply. These intrahousehold dynamics have important macroeconomic implications,influencing aggregate savings (Fernández-Villaverde and Krueger, 2007, 2011) and theallocation of talent across sectors (Hsieh et al., 2019, Goldberg et al., 2025). Goldin's (2021)seminal work argues that marriage and childbearing decisions historically act ascounterforces to women’s labor market participation. As social norms and socialinfrastructure co-evolve with economic development (Cavalcanti and Tavares, 2011), womenbecome increasingly able to balance career and family objectives.1Examining U.S. college-educated women born between 1878 and 1978, Goldin identifies five distinct stages in howthey navigate these dual objectives: (i) family or career, (ii) job then family, (iii) family thenjob, (iv) career then family, and (v) career and family. Drawing on this evolution—from starktrade-offs to greater integration—Goldin (2014) envisions a trajectory toward a “grandgender convergence”. Yet this optimism may not translate to emerging economies. Advanced economies hadcenturies to adapt social norms gradually alongside economic change. By contrast, the compressed pace of development in emerging economies intensifi