For much of the last quarter of the twentieth century, women gradually reduced gender
inequalities on many fronts.
Women continued to enter the formal
labor force
in growing numbers,
and they found previously male dominated
occupations
opening up to women's entry. The
income
they received for this work was gradually but steadily closing the gap with men's pay.
Women increased their representation at all levels of
political office.
And enveloping these structural changes was a growing egalitarian
opinion climate
eroding traditional gender roles that excluded women from
more public work and community positions.
All this changed in the early to mid-1990s.
Within a few years, each of these egalitarian trends
slowed to a halt. The flattening of the gender trend lines cuts across almost all segments of
society: working-class and middle-class; black, white, Asian, and Hispanic; mothers with young
children and mothers with older children only, women in mid-country "red" states and women in
coastal "blue" states - all groups experienced major gender setbacks during the 1990s. The
breadth of this reversal suggests something fundamental has happened to the U.S. gender
structure.
The 1990s turnaround is a puzzle since it is not immediately obvious how the 1990s were so
much more conservative than, say, the 1980s. We have been compiling data on as many aspects
of gender inequality as we can find and encourage readers to suggest other sources.
Currently we have data (see the
index) on:
