"To be fair, the 73 percent statistic is only one number in Weitzman's work. And a 30 percent decline in women's living standard is hardly ideal, either. Although the media fixed on its sensational implications, the figure has little bearing on her second and more central point - that women are worse off since 'the divorce revolution.' This is an important question because it gets to the heart of the backlash argument: women are better off 'protected' than equal." Part 1, Chap. 2, pp. 22-23

"By the end of the year, 2 million female workers had been purged from heavy industry. Employers revived prohibitions against hiring married women or imposed caps on female workers' salaries; and the federal government proposed giving unemployment assistance only to men, shut down its day care services, and defended the 'right' of veterans to displace working women. An anti-ERA coalition rallied its forces, including the federal Women's...