Women's Equality Throughout the Decades

            Not long ago, an article was written on cnn.com in response to a report that the White House released titled "Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being."  This report details the statistics of women's equality in the U.S. on issues dealing with every day living conditions.  Since the first report that the White House released was forty-eight years ago during the Kennedy administration, many of the statistic comparisons are made between 1963 and 2011.  One major improvement over the past few decades is that the authors for "Women in America" no longer saw fit to write a section about legal disadvantages that women face in court because they rarely appear.  In fact, when it comes to civil court cases such as divorce, women fare much better than men in gaining custody of the children.  Women getting admitted into professional jobs was a huge issue decades ago, but has vastly improved.  In 1963, only 2.6% of all attorneys were female and in 1960, 60% of all women who entered college dropped out.  And now one-third of all attorneys are female and women are less likely to drop of out school than men.  As expected, most women still earn lower wages than men because of women's likeliness to change their work schedule based on their children.  Nevertheless, women have still made remarkable changes in career and education over just a few decades.
              The status of women has grown economically, and women's social status as a whole has also undergone tremendous improvement.  From 1994 to 2008, reports of domestic violence against women have dropped 54% and from 1993 to 2000, reports of rape were down 60%.  These figures show a clear improvement of the respect for women over a relatively short time period.  The trend is simple to see, women are quickly making their words heard and although there are still many social and economical disadvantages for women, progress is surely being made.