Gender Equality and Fair Pay

One reason that Home Economics (now Family and Consumer Sciences) has been called a femal ghetto is because the professionals, mostly women, who work in these fields are so underpaid. Even within universities, professors teaching in FCS units are among the lowest paid. For me, the Paycheck Fairness Act was a refreshing and welcome acknowledgement of what most women know all too well: women work more cheaply than their male counterparts. The irony is, in these troubling times, our willingness to work cheap, take on the jobs of more than one person, and our increasing majorities among recipients of bachelors and masters degrees have advantaged women in this highly competitive market place. It's a sad irony, to be sure. There are those who do not beleive that gender inequality exists anymore, if it ever existed. In fact, there are those who disagree vehemently with anything resembling civil rights legislation, and those voices seem to get increasingly louder.