Despite calls for equality for women emerging from Hollywood and other corners of the world, the fact of the matter is that American women have been making progress relative to American men along many dimensions in recent decades.
In 1994, sixty-three percent of female high school graduates and sixty-one percent of male high school graduates were enrolled in college in the fall following graduation. By 2012, the share of young women enrolled in college immediately after high school had increased to seventy-one percent, but remained at sixty-one percent for men.
Women have been making relative progress in the labor market as well, in part because of their disproportionate tendency to enter healthcare occupations. In 1980, one point four million jobs in healthcare paid a middle class wage. Today, that figure is estimated at four point five million.
As reported in the New York Times, the pay of registered nurses, now the third largest middle income occupation and one that remains overwhelmingly female has expanded strongly along with increasing job demands. The median salary of sixty one thousand dollars a year in 2012 was fifty five percent greater when adjusted for inflation than three decades earlier.
