New choices, challenges

In a few months, I’m going to have to go out and get a real job. It is a sign of our times that my gender and race will have little impact on the choices I make after school. The same was not the case for my mother and women of her generation.

Indeed, for all the flack that feminism receives, the movement can be credited with single-handedly allowing women to work.

This is not to say that women’s role in the workplace has been adequately defined. It seems that for us, getting a job that values our skills is only part of the battle.

Female college graduates still get paid – on average – only 77 cents for each dollar full-time working men get paid, according to the WAGE Project Web site, a charitable organization that works to end gender discrimination.

Efforts have been made to narrow this appalling wage disparity, most recently with the introduction of the 2007 Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The act, which removes the restriction that employees must file a discrimination complaint within 180 days with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, was blocked in the Senate thanks to the Republicans.

Concerns over pay are compounded by women’s fears that the workplace is unwelcoming to mothers. Currently, 70.5 percent of women with children are in the labor force, making the need for comprehensive child care and job flexibility even more urgent, according to date from the National Association of Child Care Resources and Referral Agencies.

It is also necessary to establish that the workplace is not the only means of empowering women. Anecdotal experience alone indicates that female college students are increasingly opting to stay home and raise a family after graduating.
 
There is nothing objectionable about this development, so long as women don’t feel unnecessarily pressured into it. It is actually a sign of progress that women are able to make relatively free choices about their standing in society – choices that were once foisted on our mothers.