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responsibility of the federal government, including job safety, discrimination, and sexual
harassment. A further problem for labor is that in an era of global competition, the ability
of unions to offer substantially higher rates of pay at levels that would protect members
from inflation has dwindled, especially in the private sector.

It is unclear whether the legal environment will change. Over the past four decades,
attempts to bolster the ability of unions to organize workers and negotiate contracts have
regularly failed. The most recent attempt to reform labor law is the proposed Employee
Free Choice Act, now pending in Congress. Under the bill, once a union gets a majority of
workers at a given facility to sign a card expressing the desire for a union, that union is
automatically certified as the bargaining representative of all the workers at the facility.
The bill has many critics, including some who generally support union objectives, due to its
bias against elections as the principal vehicle for union recognition. If adopted, the bill
would represent a major change in labor-management relations, since unions have
traditionally gained bargaining-representative status only through secret-ballot votes by
the workers involved. The measure has been endorsed by the Democratic Party leadership
and might be able to gain a majority in Congress. It would, however, face a certain veto by
President George W. Bush, and its prospects for adoption under a future Democratic
president are questionable at best.8

Revolution in Women's Status

The role and status of women in the United States have undergone a major transformation
in the past four decades. Testifying to their progress is the fact that three women--
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, senator and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham
Clinton, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi--rank among the most influential public
figures in the United States. Women, in fact, hold influential positions throughout the
political field: in the administration, in the party leaderships, and in the constellation of
trade associations, lobbying firms, think tanks, and nongovernmental organizations that
play a crucial role in American government. In Congress, the number of women has grown
steadily over the past three decades. After the 2006 midterm elections, there were 61
women in the House of Representatives and 13 in the Senate, both record numbers.

The legal foundation for the equality of women was enshrined in the 1964 Civil Rights Act,
a measure that applied to both women and minority groups. Especially important was Title
VII, which barred discrimination in the workplace and set in motion a movement of women
into jobs from which they had traditionally been excluded or in which they had been
significantly underrepresented. Another important measure was the Equal Pay Act of 1963,
which made it illegal to pay men and women at different rates for jobs requiring equal
skill, effort, and responsibility.

Although initially there was considerable resistance to the "women's liberation" agenda, a
good deal of that agenda has been achieved. In particular, numerous occupations that
were overwhelmingly or even totally the province of men now include a strong contingent
of women. For example, there are currently more than 215,000 women in the military,
compared with 1.2 million men as of 2003. Sixteen percent of 1991 Persian Gulf War
veterans were women, compared with 5 percent in World War II, and women are

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