Part 4: Chapter 13 Summary and Analysis

"The Wages of the Backlash" shows Reaganomics, recession, and an expanding minimum-wage economy undermining the progress women make in the 1970s. Trend stories clash with facts. The "pay gap" between sexes is said, based on non-standard calculations, to have shrunk in 1986 to 70? on the dollar, but in fact, women make 64? on the dollar-as in 1955. Half the closing comes from men's falling wages. The gap worsens for the college-educated and for Hispanics, while blacks see no progress. The gap is widest in fields where female employment grows most: food preparation, service supervision, waiting tables, and cleaning services.

Women invading a "man's world" of business, law, the military, and factories is a trend, but in fact they are increasingly stuck in the secretarial pool and traditionally service jobs that become more female-dominated. The U.S. government, the nation's largest employer, hires...