Woman Between Islam and Western Society
1. A Survey
~ 55 ~
In the economic sphere women who work
outside the home are heavily concentrated in
the lowest paying work and that having the
lowest status. Women also earn less than men
in the same kinds of jobs. The median pay of
women workers in the U.S. was 60 percent
that of men in 1982. In Japan the percentage of
average pay was 55. Politically, women are
greatly underrepresented in national and local
government and in political parties.
21
Today the social boundaries set by time-honored
conventions have broken down, and all countries
now have laws favoring equality of the sexes. Yet
modern woman still finds herself on a lower rung
than man, not having been able to achieve equal
status in any of the economically or professionally
important areas of modern living. This state of affairs
would appear to indicate that, contrary to the
women’s libbers’ way of thinking, social conditioning
cannot be blamed for the centuries-old difference in
the status of men and women. If this had been so,
surely by the end of the 20th century women would
have been enjoying an equal status with men.
Obviously, we must search for the reasons elsewhere.
