Female Discrimination in the Labor ForceIn the past decades there has been a dramatic increase in the number of womenparticipating in the labor force. This expansion has unfortunately shown how women arestill being treated as inferior citizens when comparing their wages and the jobs they arehired for to that of men. Many women in similar occupations as men, and having thesame qualifications are only paid a fraction of what their male counterparts are paid. Theonly reasonable explanation that can be found for this income gap is discrimination. Thisunfair treatment shown throughout the handouts illustrate how far people still have to gobefore equal treatment becomes standard.The increase in female participation started occurring during the 1970's. Thenumber of women in the civilian labor force jumped from 23 million in the 1960's to 31million in the 1970's. This leap would continue and increase in the 1980's and on into the1990's. The result, in 1995, is a female labor force that numbers over 60 million. Thiscomprised 46 percent of the civilian work force (10).A reason for the rise in participation by women may be in the way women sawmarriage and children. Fewer women saw marriage as a settling down. Women who hadchildren began to return to their jobs. The number of working women that were eithermarried or had children or both increased dramatically. In 1965, women with childrenunder 18 years of age numbered 35.0 percent of the labor force. This number increasedto 47.4 percent in 1975. In ten years it was 62.1 percent and finally in 1995 it had grownto 69.7 percent (7). This showed that the female attitude towards having children andmarriage has changed.According to the handouts, in 1970 women were paid poorly when compared totheir male counterparts. The female worker had a median yearly earning of 19, 101dollars. This was only 59.4 percent of what the males made. This does start to change inthe 1980's as female earnings rose to 60.2 percent of men's. Five years later it hadreached 64.6 percent. By 1990, the female's earnings had risen to 71.6 percent of what aman would make (2).Women in the workplace have always been discriminated against. Ever since thefirst women started to work, they got paid less in the same positions that men held beforethem. In 1995, the top level managerial and professional specialty jobs were held by 7million men and 5 million women. Those women made a weekly salary of 570 dollarswhile those men made 833 dollars. This is also true in many other occupations such assales and technical operations (6). Some would say that this is the case because men arebetter qualified and more competent in their jobs.Since the year 1981, women have graduated from college in greater numbers thanmen. Women had 465, 000 graduates while men had 470, 000 in 1980. This gap wouldbe closed and eclipsed by women in 1981. That year 480, 000 women earned abachelors' degree while men only had 473, 000 (4). The gap in the number of collegegraduates is...
