Women are dropping out of the workforce at the highest rate since the 1970s, says a New York Times article:

After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for awhile.

The proportion of women holding jobs in their prime working years, 25 to 54, peaked at 74.9 percent in early 2000 as the technology investment bubble was about to burst. Eight years later, in June, it was 72.7 percent, a seemingly small decline, but those 2.2 percentage points erase more than 12 years of gains for women. Four million more in their prime years would be employed today if the old pattern had prevailed through the expansion now ending.

Journalist Louis Uchitelle cites the example of a 48-year-old woman named Ms. Samson, who never returned to the workforce after being laid off from a factory job that paid around $20 per hour:

She could be working. Jobs that pay $8 or $9 an hour are easy enough to land, she says. But she resists going back to work at less than half her old wage. Ms. Samson knows she will have to get another job at some point. So Ms. Samson, now receiving unemployment benefits, is going to college full time — leaving the work force for more than two years — hoping that a bachelor’s degree will enable her to earn at least her old wage of $20 an hour.

This struck me as one of those articles that doesn’t intrinsically contain much new information, but sparks discussion on the topic of women and the economy. Therein lies its value.

Crucial points to add:

Going on leave isn’t always voluntary for women.
–If childcare costs eat up a woman’s entire salary, there’s no ROI for her job. She might as well quit.
–Commuting is a big consideration for mothers. What’s the point of working if you’re gone 12 hours a day, barely see your kid, and barely make money because of skyrocketing gas costs?
–Few jobs these days seem to offer benefits. Benefits are a big job consideration for many women.
–Quite a few older women (55+) find it hard, if not impossible, to get rehired after dropping out of the workforce or changing jobs.

This is a systemic problem for Americans of both genders.
–Outsourcing, skyrocketing health care costs, and wage stagnation do not a good career make.
–The economy is changing rapidly, requiring workers to adapt. They primarily do this through education. Learning new skills, then, is a necessity rather than a luxury.

And, finally–the article fails to cover the plight of single women, who often have no choice but to work.

That said, I have no idea what this means for equality, if anything. It merely appears to be another sad economic fact…

Doesn't an SAT total score of 1200 combined with an A average mean something different for an applicant raised in a low-income household and educated in a run-down public school than for an applicant from a high-income home and educated in an outstanding private school?

Yes, and here's why – because the poor student who does well in spite of hardships shows that he/she wants to do better, to get out of the current situation, and to make a future much better than the past. As Walter pointed out last week, talking about affirmative action can get confusing because the situation of a poor vs. a middle class or rich minority student is very different. I don't support affirmative action for people who don't appear to be trying to better themselves in life. But for those who do reasonably well in spite of growing up in a bad neighborhood with plenty of distractions, yes they deserve to be rewarded for their perserverance.

"The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens
free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits."

There is a difference between government and culture, and the former should not try to dictate the latter. We can not tell culture what to value or disdain, we can only make our individual choices. Aiding some students and restraining others based on their looks doesn't seem like a good idea to me. We can never be a truly color blind society as long as race is even a factor in admissions. To me, the key to making minorities better off is to change the culture of that minority, and that can't be legislated – it must start at the roots. If inner city African Americans developed a passion for learning greater than what they currently have for basketball or hip-hop, this issue would quickly go away.

UPDATE:BusinessWeek has a good commentary on this.

The argument for diversity (read: racial) quotas is that racial diversity enhances education. However, I turn down the lights in my classroom when I teach so I may use computerized presentations. I have no idea what the race of my students are when they are sitting there and even when they speak. And I don't care. What is really imporant is to have some debate among alternative hypotheses (ideas). The diversity backers argue that diversity of ideas will come from racial diversity. But this presupposes that race is highly correlated with certain types of ideas. In other words, all people of one racial group tend to think in one particular manner that cannot be understood by another racial group.

It sounds as if these people supporting diversity must be racist to think that race (as opposed to geographic location or socioeconomic status) is a primary factor in how one thinks. They are glorifying the very differences they deny exist. I guess John is right…like fish in a barrel.