© 1991 by Oxford University Press
research-article |
EQUAL RIGHTS FAILS AMERICAN MOTHERS: THE LIMITATIONS OF AN EQUAL RIGHTS STRATEGY IN FAMILY LAW AND THE WORKPLACE
*Assistant Professor, School of Social Welfare, University of California Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
Family law reforms in the United States over the past few decades have been impelled by an ideology of achieving equality between men and women. Despite these reforms the inequalities between American women and men, especially after breakdown of marriage, remain substantial. This article explains how these changes have worked against the interests of women. It argues that equal rights strategies overlook the significance of motherhood. In the workplace, the article argues that the integration theory, according to which the promotion of workplace equality dissolves the distinctions between male and female occupations, has failed and that a better model is the doctrine of comparable worth, which offers a non-competitive ideal of fairness or, pay equity, which recognizes the real patterns of women's working lives. The extent to which this model is followed in the United States is examined, as is the case for special recognition of the roles of mothers in other employment practices.