Women Will Get It Done

Currently, women are presidents of the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association.

Patrice A Harris, MD, MA is the president of the American Medical Association and is the first African American woman to hold that position,

Judy Perry Martinez is the president of the American Bar Association. [WW]


For the first time in the 159-year history of MIT, the MIT Undergraduate Association of students has elected a black woman as its president. Danielle Geathers is a rising junior from Miami, Florida. Gaethers is majoring in mechanical engineering and plans to use her platform to make the school as inclusive as possible.

6 percent of the graduates of this school are black and 47 percent are women. [CNN 5/29/20]


The following are excerpts from “The Gender Revolution is stalling – What would reinvigorate it?”

The percent of women employed for pay rose steadily from 1970 to 2000 from 48% to 75% of women employed. However, since 2000, the percent employed has not increased and has in fact dropped a couple of points as of 2018.

Between 1970 and 2018 the number of B.A. degrees awarded to women went from .76% as many degrees as men to getting 1.34% as many as men.

When it comes to doctoral degrees the ratio of women to getting degrees went from .13% to 1.18% for the same period. In the United States, women are now more educated than men.

The percent of women or men who would have to move occupations to produce integration (defined by women constituting the same percentage of each job as they are of the employed in the work force as a whole) went from 60% in 1970 to 42% in 2018. The rate slowed down appreciably from 1990 to 2018.

In the 1970s women made about 60% of what men did. After 1980 this number rose dramatically to 74% in 1990. By 2018 this number had moved to 83%.

Women’s employment would go up from the current 73% if childcare were publicly financed for children whose parents wanted to use it. Among other policies include provision for parental leave, flexible movement between full and part-time work and choice of the hours of the day to work.

Research shows that predominantly female jobs have systematically lower pay than predominantly male jobs that entail different tasks but require the same amount of education.

If it were more socially acceptable for a husband to work part-time or take time out of employment to care for his children, the gender gap would fall.

If the idea of a woman out earning her husband were unremarkable and not stigmatizing to either the woman of the man, this would be less impediment to woman’s success. [Brookings Gender Equality Series 6/2020]