This gradual shift from the homemaker wife to a successful career-orientated woman has taken time, yet is prominent throughout the U.S. today. The percentage increase of working married women since 1935 has well over doubled and will be further investigated throughout this paper. Now that there has been an extreme increase in the number of women working, in addition to or without husbands, the U.S. government must reconsider the efficacy of Social Security and whom it really benefits. The government must also consider reforms and other necessary precautions to match the new demands of this changing society.
The birth of the Social Security legislation in 1935 provided retirement benefits only to those who contributed to the system through covered employment. The system was created as a gender-neutral program, yet the basis on which Social Security was created was a male work cycle. Our retirement policies still best serve the traditional family: a paid worker who is usually the husband and an unpaid homemaker who is the wife. Today, most families do not conform to this profile with the increased participation of women in the workforce, the high divorce rate, and single parenting. Social Security does not benefit the families who deviate from the classic definition of a family in the same way it does a traditional family. The influx of women into the work force since 1930 up until 1991 is exponential. In 1930 there was 23.6 percent labor force participation rate for women followed by an 82.1 percent participation rate for men. The gap between these two rates, 58.5 percent, is immense and reverberates the notion of the traditional family. By 1980, the women's labor participation rate more than doubled to reach 51.6 percent (Ferber 1993). These changing rates in the labor force participation rate of women have led to the common deviation from what one considers an old-style family. For example, 61.