Woman Between Islam and Western Society
3. Western Woman
~ 122 ~
she lost her domestic servants and the unpaid
household help of relatives living in the old, large
family; she had to become either a “household
drudge” or “carry the intolerably heavy load of two
simultaneous
full-time jobs.”
19
In 1972, though American women already made
up more than one third of the national workforce,
they were concentrated in lower-skilled and
lower-paying positions. An average woman
employed in a full-time job earned only two
thirds of the salary paid to a man with a similar
job. Childcare facilities were few and far between,
and often too expensive. The same number of
women as men graduated from high school that
year, but only 41 percent of the women compared
to 59 percent of the men went on to college. There
had never been a woman justice on the U.S.
Supreme Court, and less than 3 percent of the
nation’s lawyers were women. The first five
female agents for the U.S. Secret Service were
only then beginning training. And politically,
women were barely visible: in 1975, only one in
ten statewide elected officials and state legislators
