Facing the facts

...The result of our failure to accept the facts on women and work is that we deprive ourselves of a sound national economy in which the creative and practical potential of each human being is utilized and one which integrates the human resources of the nation...

...At another, a student was disturbed that a woman apparently his mother's age could be concerned about inequity in the workplace and wrote a thesis about me...

...Government does have a definite role in social and economic life...

...there I will spend an academic year as a Fellow at the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research, pursuing a project in Catholic social thought, always a favorite topic of mine...

...Our failure to adapt government and business policy to the facts of women working and the different seasons of a woman's life cycle put American women at great disadvantage...

...It is, I think more than a decade since I wrote my first column for Commonweal about it and spoke first about it to a university audience (Notre Dame...

...My thesis was always the same - - that, except for the privileged of the upper and middle classes, women have always worked outside the home in the western world and, therefore, the question of the remuneration they receive, and the conditions under which they work, are questions of justice...

...It could have been simplistic and moralistic...

...Instead it is readable, moral, nuanced, balanced -- all in all, deserving of the compliment of the right-wing attacks it has been receiving...

...The result: New York and other urban areas around the country must now provide shelter not for dozens every night but literally for thousands...

...This summer women who hold office, women business owners, women in the corporations, women board chairmen and presidents of the colleges, union women, and women of the various women's organizations are joining together to sponsor a conference on women, the economy, and public policy...

...The percentage of women now in professional schools as a result of equal opportunity admissions policies is almost astonishing - - up to 40 percent of those qualifying for some of the best law schools, for example, and in the case of one veterinary school (the toughest of all professional schools to get into are the veterinary schools of the nation...

...Their work in the home or in the volunteer sector is not considered part of the gross national product, although the nation might well founder without either...

...Here I don't think the U.S...

...After that I will be open to whatever interesting retirement projects that may turn up...

...I am asked to talk about many things -- books, political life, the world of Washington, ecumenism, the laity in the churches, and, of course, women in the church and society...

...Even Mexico, Brazil, and Japan can boast better ratios than we can...

...The difference lies in policy...

...It is hoped that it will be an educational conference gathering together and making visible the facts on women and work, and to give the subject truly coordinated study...

...52 percent...

...Economists predict now that the average American woman will spend thirty years of her life in the workplace...

...Where policy has been adapted to the facts, change has been quick and significant...

...Since John F. Kennedy, a qualified Catholic probably would not have any special problem getting himself elected president of the United States if he were brave enough or foolish enough to want that awesome job...

...The number of women owners of small businesses has jumped by leaps and bounds - - chiefly the result of altered credit policies...

...On that positive note I will end, with best wishes to all my readers, to the Commonweal Associates, and to all my colleagues, past and present...

...The church has problems since Vatican II, but nothing to compare with what problems there would have been if the council had not taken place...

...The pastoral could have been leaden and lifeless...

...The one subject which I find still upsets people and the area in which they have the most resistance to the facts is that of women and 23 March 1984:167 work...

...ABIGAIL McCARTHY Commonweal: 168...

...wrote the dean of a newly coeducational Jesuit university...

...Family women, whether they are working outside the home or not, suffer most from our lack of a policy which recognizes the facts of their lives and needs...

...JAMES O'GARA (James O'Gara was Managing Editor of Commonweal from January 1952 to May of 1967 and Editor from that date till the present...

...There are some facts they are not willing to accept, others ! evident for years but which they are just beginning to accept, and some startling and disturbing facts which they seem to have accepted without any struggle at all...

...Her children represent more than half of all poor children...

...Somehow I have never been able to make the facts palatable, although I am sure that other lecturers have...

...I could feel you losing them the minute you began talking about most women not being able to be 'queen of the home...

...It goes without saying that, as a result of the women's movement, there is growing acceptance of the principle of equality...

...Not so long ago the consultant firm, Korn-Ferry, was able to publish the results of a study on women in management and how they differed from men...

...Going about on the lecture circuit can be equally so for those of us who sit at the typewriter generalizing about many things...

...In comparison with nuclear confrontation, all other issues fade into insignificance...

...Sixty-seven of the other industrialized countries provide a family or child allowance in terms of monthly cash benefits...

...Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy FACING THE FACTS THE ECONOMICS OF WOMEN G ETTING OUT and meeting the voters is supposed to be a salutary exercise for office-holders and candidates...

...The call to the conference began by citing the familiar phrase - - " I f women would only stay home - - " and went on to make the point that if this oftenexpressed wish were suddenly fulfilled, the economy would suddenly grind to a halt...

...But, alas, that is not the case...

...Their children are considered national assets worthy of free public education once they reach school age but they are left alone with the responsibility for their care before that...

...it is neither...

...John's, the Benedictine university in Collegeville, Minnesota...

...it is not...

...It was made ready in draft after draft, written and rewritten after long and extensive consultations with experts and lay people from all over the country...

...There have been a lot of other developments in the last thirty years, many of them to the good, at least if you forget about things like Vietnam and El Salvador...

...Incidentally, since the recent drop in unemployment is attributed in large part to the jobs generated by small business, the connection to the general health of the economy is clear...

...The change was clearly the result of altered employment, selection, training, and promotion policies...

...If we at the typewriters (or wordprocessors...

...So thank you again and goodbye for now...

...It has been a good thirty-two years, blessed as they were in the kind of people I have worked with and in the experiences I have had, including a certain amount of foreign travel and reporting, which I dearly love...

...Sooner or later, the social evolution of Catholics to full economic and educational status would have meant a crisis, the problem of facing the intellectual challenge of the modern world...

...A special word of praise should be added for the way the pastoral was prepared...

...Take as simple a thing as food stamps, for instance...

...Most of us would like to feel that it is a matter of choice rather than necessity - - something I myself understand as a mother who spent more than twenty years "in the home...

...The bad thing -- the worst thing -- is the most obvious: the arms race and the ever worsening nuclear confrontation between the superpowers...

...could sort these out we would know a lot more about what needs further discussion and what does not...

...here the recent economic report shows more and more one-breadwinner families falling below the poverty line...

...This is crucial...

...As for the future, in September my wife and I will go to St...

...Since the current administration took over, there has been a lot of abuse directed at this and other social programs, but the central fact remains: there are hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children who are not going to bed hungry tonight because of these programs, just as there are hundreds of thousands who are getting badly needed medical care because of Medicare and Medicaid...

...The Catholic Worker can house a few dozen people in each house of hospitality, but a young New York lawyer inspired by the movement could also go to court on behalf of the homeless sleeping on the city's grates and in the subways...

...Nonetheless, in the Reagan years especially, it seems to me that many of our offers in arms negotiations have been self-serving and selfdefeating...

...That's a plus...

...Why do American women who work earn on the average only fifty-nine cents to the dollar men earn when, according to a study by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, German women earn 72 percent, French women 86 percent...

...In this it was a model for how such letters should be prepared, and I hope none is written any other way in the future...

...Five years earlier - - only five years - - they could not have made the study because the number of women in managemerit would not have provided a significant number to study...

...Family women suffer from inequitable pension policies, sick and maternity leave policies, and tax policies...

...A S FOR THE WORLD the church is here to serve, plenty of changes have taken place there too...

...It is hoped that documenting as dramatically as possible the essential contribution of women to the economy will stimulate changes in policy...

...The way things are now, both sides are making proposals for the front pages that they know will be turned down...

...is blameless by any means...

...so that neither man nor woman, child nor adult, suffers deprivation because of a cultural blindness on our part...

...The dire position of the woman who is single head of household is well known...

...Women are now so much a part of the economy as producers, consumers, investors, conservers, and workers that most of the institutions and enterprises we consider necessary to the nation's welfare could not go on without them...

...And that brings me to the bishops' pastoral on the topic, about which I am enthusiastic...

...With all the flaws of such programs, in a complex society like ours what are they but ways we have devised to carry out the works of mercy...

...They are viewed as dependents rather than as producers...

...For the past ten years I have done some talking each year and I have discovered that what I learn is not so much more about what is true but what people feel about what is true...

...Education and health care are only two of these...

...From the days of my youth, when I was involved in organizing a CIO union, I don't think I have suffered any illusions about the Communists or the Soviet Union...

...But women as well as men still resist the fact that most women have had to work outside the home in the past and will have to do so in the future...