NCJ Number
121117
Date Published
1989
Length
216 pages
Annotation
While as a society we pride ourselves on our democratic values, substantial inequalities between the sexes still exist.
Abstract
Full-time working women earn on average 71 percent of the earnings of full-time working men. One-half of poor and three-fifths of chronically-poor households with dependent children are supported by a single female parent. The poverty rate for elderly women is twice that of elderly men. In addition, there is an unequal distribution of unpaid labor of the family; both the expectation and the experience of the division of labor by sex make women vulnerable. A central source of injustice for women is that the law, most notably in divorce, treats more or less as equals those whom custom, workplace discrimination, and the still conventional division of labor within the family have made very unequal. Central to this socially-created inequality are two commonly made, but inconsistent presumptions that women are primarily responsible for the rearing of children and that serious and committed members of the work force do not have primary responsibility, or even shared responsibility, for the rearing of children. Over the years, our society has regarded the innate characteristic of sex as one of the clearest legitimizers of different rights and restrictions, both formal and informal. This book suggests changes in our laws, public policies, and social institutions and addresses the issues of feminization of poverty, the inequities of divorce law, and the failure to apply standards of justice to the family.