This article investigates the labour supply responses of married
women in Australia to their partners’ involuntary job loss. We
study women’s labour market activities in the periods before and
after their partners’ job loss. We find a significant added worker
effect (AddWE) in terms of increased full-time employment and
working hours. The findings also suggest that it is harder for the
female partners of men who have recently lost jobs to enter the
labour market than it is for those already working to increase
their working hours to compensate for lost income incurred by
their partners’ job loss. The effect is persistent; one year after the
partners’ job loss, women would still like to work more hours than
they actually work. These findings suggest that marriage plays a
risk-sharing role through the AddWE in Australia.