The State of the American Woman

[wiccanslyr]

I read an article in Time Magazine today that inspired me to sit down and write out a real, thought filled blog entry. The article, which I have scanned and added to this post after the cut, was all about the State of the American Woman and was mostly about her role in the US economy and work force today

Comments

[jeswel]

Those are some really interesting points. The only thing that I wanted to say is not only was "female ignorance" mistaken as "female happiness," but those few women who were lucky enough to have freedom and education above what other women had, were still constrained by societal norms that expected women to be happy. They weren't allowed to say "I'm pissed off." They were expected to grin, bare it and have dinner on the table regardless of how happy they weren't.

[kyuuketsuki_li]

The 77 cent statistic will never change, as it is a politically useful statistic, and everyone has heard it often enough that they reflexively believe it to be true. As the incidence of actual wage disparity goes down, salary surveys that focus on this issue massage the definitions of workforce and the categories of people compared to give the 'correct' result. More recent surveys have abandoned the comparisons of people with the same job, for example, in favor of the 'whole career' earnings of people with similar education.

Ultimately though, I think that there are actual differences between men and women (firm, yet soft diff...er anyway) and any attempt to shoehorn both groups into the same box is going to ba damaging to at least one. If the box is a compromise, then it'd just hurt both.