Women: Not There Yet
The anniversary of the day on which women won the right to vote--which is today--offers the descendants of the suffragettes a chance to take stock. This year the balance sheet is mixed: no flamboyant firsts; some quiet gains offset by uncertainties. Only time will tell how a U.S. Supreme Court led by William H. Rehnquist will rule on the issues of abortion and sex discrimination.
Measured against their status even a decade ago, women have seen more doors open into the professions, better-paying blue-collar jobs and the work force in general. Many young women take for granted opportunities that their mothers only imagined. That alone is progress, although discrimination and disappointments linger.
Real gains buttressed those expectations this year. Several Supreme Court decisions were important both for what they contained and for the fact that they resisted archaic thinking about women’s rights at the highest levels of government. The Supreme Court ruled that sex harassment is a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It reaffirmed women’s legal right to abortion, but only on a 5-4 vote. And it reaffirmed affirmative action as a remedy for past discrimination.
There are many indicators of how seriously society takes the aspirations of women. One is the importance that it attaches to providing daytime care for the children of working women, who still take most of the responsibility for child-rearing. These programs often suffer first when governments cut spending; too few employers see the long-term benefits of contributing to child care. Another indicator is the financial standing of women. Too many women are poor, and that means that too many children get a poor start in life. Too often women don’t make as much money as men because--another indicator--society does not value their work as highly as it values that of men.
Colleges now are relatively free to discriminate against women in some of their programs, consciously or unconsciously, because the federal government is unlikely to cut off financial aid to the guilty campuses. Congress hasn’t been willing to correct the situation.
It would help if there were some impetus for change from the top. But President Reagan apparently does not understand the aspirations of women, let alone being willing to help advance them.
Not nearly enough women are breaking through into the upper levels of politics and business to help make up for the lack of political leadership. Just 5% of the members of Congress are women, and they’re only slightly more visible in statehouses. Corporate America still has too few women in top jobs. Only one woman heads a Fortune 500 company; the number of women on corporate boards of the top 1,000 companies has nearly tripled in the last decade, but still is only 439.
While society better reflects the influence of women today than it did a decade or two ago, all too often women still must depend on the kindness of strangers. That is not equality.
