1960s: In the United States, median female earnings relative to median male earnings is about sixty percent. In Britain in 1970, the figure is about sixty-five percent. However, the passing of equal opportunity laws in the mid-1960s lays the basis for an improvement in women's earnings and the widening of their career opportunities. The effects of these developments, in both Britain and the United States, will not be felt until the mid-1970s.

Today: Economic inequalities relating to gender remain significant. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median earnings of women fifteen years and over who worked full-time in 1999 is $26,300, which is seventy-two percent of the median earnings of men ($36,500). In Britain, women's earnings are eighty-one percent of men's, but women working part-time (which amounts to over half of the women in paid employment) earn less than sixty percent of what men...