Eight in ten homemakers have held a job in the past

In 2011, among women aged 20 and 59 who were not students, 2.1 million were “homemakers”: they live in a couple and are inactive. In 1991, there were 3.5 million of them. Homemakers are less qualified than active women living in a couple, but have more qualifications than they did twenty years ago. This situation is becoming rarer in the middle age groups, and is more frequent at ages when their children are still small and among those in their fifties, who are even more numerous (37% of homemakers). Eight in ten homemakers have held a job in the past. They often stop working when a child is born, but there is also a link with a less favourable economic context. Homemakers who have never worked have fewer qualifications and more often have large families.