To the Editor:

Re “Women Are Now Equal as Victims of Poor Economy” (front page, July 22):

After years of increasing participation in the work force, women, you report, have reached a much less desirable milestone: a fall in the percentage who are working. But contrary to the suggestion that women are now on par with men because they’re leaving the work force at similar rates, we know that women have always lagged well behind in good times and bad.

This is especially true for low-income women and women of color who face multiple barriers to economic security: race, gender and class.

Today, despite decades of struggle for job access and pay equity, women are paid 77 cents for each dollar a man makes; the disparity is worse for African-American women, who earn 62 cents, and Latinas, who earn 53 cents.

Nearly 10.5 million women are single parents (as compared with 2.5 million single fathers). For them, opting out for any reason—like motherhood or education—is not viable.

Already disadvantaged by years of workplace and legislative failures, women and their families face an increasingly insecure future if policies are not adjusted to meet their ever more pressing needs.

Sara K. Gould
President and Chief Executive
Ms. Foundation for Women
New York, July 22, 2008

Note from KBJ: Justice requires that likes be treated alike. It does not require that unlikes be treated alike. Indeed, it forbids it. It follows that a woman is being treated unjustly only if she is paid less than a man for doing the same work for the same employer. If the letter writer has information that woman W and man M are doing the same work for the same employer, but that M is being paid more than W, then she has found a case of injustice. She provides no such information in this letter. Remember this whenever you hear the “77 cents” mantra.