having just finished writing my Women’s Studies final exam

by Vaselina

Posted to Utterances on 2003-12-12 17:40:00

Parent message is 560809
i can tell you, this question was on the test.

North American women are earning 71% of men’s annual incomes, on average. This can be partially explained by what feminists term “the glass ceiling”. This term refers to hidden structures (such as a tradition of sexism) which limit how far a woman’s professional career can go. We know that the higher we look in the hierarchy of any field, the more men we will find.

Also, the highest paying professions such as lawyers and physicians are predominantly filled by men, while women are still vastly employed in the service industry and secondary market jobs which reflect the private sphere, such as nursing, teaching, or domestic caregivers. Such jobs are considered ‘undesirable work’ and require less education and formal training, they pay smaller wages and provide virtually no benefits whatsoever.

More men also work more full-time, full-year jobs, while part-time, temporary, and casual positions are filled by more women. The majority of people living under the poverty level are women, who are at a greater risk of living in poverty. Women are still considered the traditional caregivers of children and are usually awarded the custody of their children upon divorce, establishing them as the more frequent single-parent. Then they pay for daycare service while they go to their jobs which pay 71% of a man’s income, and have to pay higher rent on bigger houses to support more children than men do. Medical and dental benefits are also higher for women with children than for those without, and these single-mothers must pay all of these added costs out of their smaller incomes.