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market escalated, and more women returned to work after having chil-
dren. This led to a major rise in the workforce. By 1980, 52 per cent of
Americans aged 16 or over were in the workforce, and, as a result of
economic growth in the 1990s, the percentage rose to 67.3 in 2000,
although, in 2004, it fell to 66 (with the unemployment rate at 5.4 per
cent); for women the percentage was about 60. The harsher work
requirements and benefit restrictions that constituted welfare reform
in 1996 led to a marked increase in the percentage of never-married
mothers working: from 46 in 1994 to 66 in 2002. The range of female
activities also expanded. The growth in the commercial and financial
sectors provided women with many opportunities. The appointment
of the first female Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O Connor in
1981, was followed, in 1984, with the first female Vice Presidential
candidate, Geraldine Ferraro, although she was unsuccessful. A greater
assertiveness among prominent women was seen in the development
of the role of First Ladies, from the quiet consorts of the 1950s and 60s
to forthright feminists with Betty Ford and Hillary Clinton.
Most women, however, worked in far more limiting jobs, and back-
ground played a major role in helping to define the opportunities for
women. In California in 2001, for example, 77 per cent of us-born
white women worked, compared to 73 per cent of black women and
74 per cent of us-born Hispanic women, but the average hourly wage
was 18.8, 16.0 and 15.1 dollars respectively. For Hispanic women born
abroad the percentage fell to 58 and the wage to 10.4 dollars, indicating
s oc i a l t r e nds 97
the role of education. The advantage of us education was also shown
by the contrast between us-born Asian women (84 per cent and 18.3
dollars) and South-East Asian-born women (60 per cent and 15.8 dollars).
This was more important than colour.
The legal position of women also improved, while equal rights were
enshrined in institutional practices. This led to action against sexual
harassment, although allegations of harassment did not prevent
Clarence Thomas from joining the Supreme Court in 1991, or Arnold
Schwarzenegger from becoming Governor of California in 2003. The
prevalence of harassment was indicated by a series of scandals in
the military and was also suggested by surveys. A survey of nearly
4,000 National Guard or Reservists serving between 1950 and 2000
conducted by the Department of Veteran Affairs and released in 2005
revealed that more than 27 per cent of males experienced some type of
sexual harassment or assault, mostly from other men, but that the
percentage for women was 60. As an indication of prevailing norms,
fewer than a quarter of the women had reported the harassment and
many who did were encouraged to drop their complaint. From the
1990s another aspect of harassment emerged clearly in, and from, the
gangsta rap movement, Niggaz with Attitude, which centred on Los
Angeles. The misogynist theme of many of their songs has been related
to the failure of many fathers in black ghettos to support and guide
their children. Having said this, the lyrics are also frequently homo-
phobic. In the late 1970s conservative populism blocked an Equal
Rights Amendment designed against gender discrimination, an
amendment that had been pressed by Betty Ford. However, the judicial
response to perceived harassment became much harsher, and the defi-
nition of harassment was greatly extended. In 2005 the California
Supreme Court decided that an atmosphere of sexual favouritism
could be the basis for legal action, with employees able to claim harass-
ment even if not approached for sexual favours.
Abortion was also an important and continuing field of political and
legal contention. The sense of major change was noted by Ruth, a char-
acter in John Updike s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Rabbit Is Rich (1981):
I did have the abortion. My parents arranged it with a doctor in
Pottsville. He did it right in his office and about a year later a girl died
98 a l t e r e d s t a t e s
afterwards of complications and they put him in jail. Now the girls just
walk into the hospital. Far from being simply a case of the liberalization
of the law at the national level permitted by the Supreme Court in 1973,
there was also important subsequent legislation, litigation and judge-
ment. In 2000, a year in which there were 1.3 million abortions, the
Supreme Court rejected a Nebraska law that had banned partial birth
abortions, which remove a foetus through the cervix, only for Congress
in 2003 to pass the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act outlawing such abor-
tions, legislation twice vetoed by Clinton. Since this Act conflicted with
the Supreme Court s judgement that abortion rulings include an excep-
tion for the mother s health, a district court and a federal appeals court
invalidated it. Congress argued that the health exception was superflu-
ous in this case because the procedure it claimed was unnecessary. In
2005 legal disputes over abortion included the case of whether Hawaii
had the authority to allow counties to ban aerial advertising, since an anti-
abortion group wished to pull banners showing aborted foetuses behind
planes, as it had already done elsewhere without legal prohibition. In
March 2006 South Dakota banned abortion except where the mother s
life is at risk.
Female self-consciousness was partly a matter of views on legal
issues such as abortion, and more generally on feminism, but there
was also a more general interest in the distinctive position of women.
In geographical terms, this led to works such as the Women s Atlas of the
United States (1995) by Cathy and Timothy Fast. This mapped data such
as the percentages of women living in shelters for abused women. The
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