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substantially represented in the officer ranks.9 In sports, 2.9 million girls participated in
high school athletics in the 2002-03 school year, compared with 800,000 girls 30 years
earlier.10 Women are more likely than men to have graduated from college (88 percent
versus 85 percent), and more likely to have a college degree in the crucial age bracket
between 25 and 29 (31 percent versus 26 percent).11

In the professions, too, the numbers show a remarkable transformation. In 1970, only 7.6
percent of physicians were women. By 2004 that figure had risen to over 26 percent.12
Moreover, statistics for enrollment in medical colleges suggest that the percentage of
women in medicine is destined to grow substantially. For the 1969-70 school year, just 9
percent of medical school enrollees were women; for the academic year 2002-03, women's
enrollment was over 46 percent, and for the year 2004-05, it was 48.6 percent, near
parity with men.13 Similar trajectories obtain for law school enrollment. Women comprised
11.1 percent of law school students in the academic year 1972-73. For the academic year
2005-06, that figure had risen to 47.5 percent, again near parity.14 The increase in
business school enrollment has also been dramatic. In the class of 1965 at Harvard
Business School, a mere 2 percent of enrollees were female; in 2007, that figure was 38
percent.15

Despite the huge increase in women in high-paying professions, women still lag behind
men in average income. The most recent figures suggest that for 2004, the median
earnings for women were 80 percent of those for men. This ratio varied significantly
between demographic groups: for blacks it was 89 percent; for Latinos, 87 percent; for
whites, 80 percent; and for Asians, 76 percent. Yet in 1979, women earned just 63
percent of what men earned. Significantly, for the youngest age cohort, 16 to 24 years old,
women earned 94 percent of the median male earnings. By contrast, for those aged 35
and older, women earned 75 percent of their male counterparts' pay.

The reasons for the gap between men's and women's wages are the subject of
considerable debate. Many researchers hold that women are more likely to drop out of the
workforce for lengthy periods in order to care for children.16 According to the Labor
Department, the number of women who have chosen to stay at home has risen recently,
and the increase has been especially sharp among highly educated mothers who might
otherwise be earning high salaries. This could account for a recent stagnation in the
earnings gap for college graduates. Others, however, point to the "feminization of
poverty," a phenomenon driven by the increase in female-headed households. In 2000,
about 11 percent of American families lived in poverty, but 28 percent of female-headed
families did so. Most of these women were divorced or never married. Many have little
education or job skills, and thus qualify only for poorly paid positions in the service sector.

In the 1980s, some women's rights organizations sought to rectify what they claimed were
continued inequities in the workplace through a policy known as comparable worth.
According to civil rights law, American workers regardless of race or sex were to be given
equal pay for equal work, whether they were receptionists, cab drivers, or electricians. But
according to some feminist theorists, the doctrine of equal pay for equal work was
insufficient. They asserted that jobs traditionally held by women were devalued precisely
because they were women's occupations. To rectify this state of affairs, they promoted a

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