Jobs: A Good Man Is Hard to Find--So They Hire Women

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Sexual Discrimination. Women still tend to get the lower-paying, less interesting jobs. Their representation in management remains negligible, and such professions as law and medicine are still difficult to crack. Less than 1 % of working women earn $10,000 or more, their median income is $3,145—not much above the Government's official poverty line—compared with $5,308 for men. But with the help of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on sex as well as race, many women are being treated almost as equals. Boston Local 34 of the Bartenders and Dining Room Employees Union has finally admitted women, with the result that they now can serve as waitresses in places previously closed to them.

For many years ahead, women will constitute the fastest-rising supply of new workers. The U.S. Labor Department estimates that in the decade ending in 1975, the total of working women will increase by 25%, while the gain for men will be 17%. No wonder that when the venerable church bell rings out every evening at Ipswich, Mass., the bell ringer is a woman—for the first time in 333 years.