My feminist post

I recently read an article on MSN that talked about how women are passing or catching up to men in college areas that were once dominated by men. It felt good to read that because you would think that by 2006 there wouldn't be an issue of having too few women pursuing medicine, law, business, etc. The article mentioned that there was a 22 percent increase from a decade ago of women enrolling in graduate and professional degree programs. Women are outnumbering men on college campuses by almost 2 million and the gap keeps growing. It appears that the number of men enrolling into undergraduate degree programs is actually declining, with many of them choosing not to pursue higher education at all. Just as I was feeling all warm and fuzzy inside about the progress us women have made, it was soured once I read that even with the strides we have made in the academic and professional worlds, on average we still are earning only 76 cents for every dollar that a man earns. How is this possible?

The US population is 51% female, 58% of all college students (both undergrad and graduate) are women and 54% of college graduates in 2004 were women. If you believe the statistics, women have the potential to be the stronghold of the American workforce, so it astounds me that we're still getting paid less. Never mind the fact that the first women's movement--the suffrage movement was at its peak in the late 19th and early 20th century, never mind the fact that part two of the women's rights movement took place some 40 years ago, and never mind the fact that pay discrimination is illegal and has been for a very long time, let's just look at one simple fact: we are no longer outnumbered. Doesn't it make sense that if women are outpacing men in managerial roles, if we're producing more doctors, lawyers, and scientists, and if there are millions more women than men graduating and entering the workforce that people would wake up and say, "hey, women are the majority. They are now where men were 30 years ago, and men are now where women were 20 years ago. Maybe it's time for their pay to reflect that." Makes perfectly good sense to me! Now I'm not saying that we should pay men less; thanks to Mr. Bush our economy surely wouldn't be able to handle that, however it is long overdue that women are given the same pay for the same work as their male counterparts. It is really disappointing to have to say that in this day and age. Something tells me that it's time for another revolution.